


Be All You Can Be

by flawedamythyst



Category: Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bigotry & Prejudice, Enemies to Lovers, Hydra's Terrible Ideology, M/M, Minor Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Racist Language, Slurs, Soulmate Healing, US Army Basic Training, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26620015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/pseuds/flawedamythyst
Summary: Clint had a horrible, sinking feeling. “And, by ‘go in’, you mean…?”Hill gave him a beaming smile. “You’ve both enlisted in the US Army, boys. Time to be all you can be.”Clint was aware that he'd been acting like a dick since Barnes joined the Avengers, but it felt like the asshole had taken over everything that Clint contributed towards the team and left him feeling useless. He couldn't help wondering exactly when he was going to be officially replaced and lose the closest thing he'd ever had to a real home.So of course SHIELD decided to partner them together for a long-term undercover mission in the US Army. This was going to be hell.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 327
Kudos: 680
Collections: Charity Hawktion 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LoonyLoopyLisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLoopyLisa/gifts).



> Huge thanks to Lisa for bidding on me, I hope you enjoy this! All 6 chapters should be posted in the next week or two.
> 
> This whole fic is completely indebted to CB for her support and betaing, she's been so much help.
> 
> As a sidenote, I am a Brit and non-military, so probably have some of the details of basic training wrong. Just assume that's a difference between our universe and Marvel's, yeah?

Clint had just never been any good at being the bigger guy. 

So when he walked into the Tower lounge to find Barnes already in his usual seat for communal movie night, maybe he was a bit sulky about it for the rest of the evening. When he went to find Natasha after a mission that touched a bit close to home and found Barnes already there, slumped on her couch where Clint wanted to be, talking softly in Russian, he just turned around and left without bothering to say anything. When he asked Steve to spar and found out he already had plans with Barnes, he rolled his eyes and made a bitchy comment about how surely the Winter Soldier didn’t need any more training and fucked off before Steve could yell at him for being a jerk.

And when he got the perfect shot lined up on a mission, two arrows all ready to take out both the AIM agents keeping Natasha pinned down, only for Barnes to come charging over the rooftops from his own nest, hosing the place with semi-automatic fire, he called him a fucking asshole over the comms.

“Hawkeye!” snapped Steve, but didn’t say anything about the single finger Barnes raised in Clint’s direction. Clint ground his teeth together and sent both arrows at the one guy shooting up at Sam instead, wondering what the point of being on the team was any more, now they had a super-soldier sniper to replace him.

He shut that thought down before it could go down the spiral that he usually saved for late at night, and gritted his teeth as they finished shutting down AIM’s latest pointless bullshit. He ran out of targets from above and asked Steve if he wanted him to come down.

“No, we’ve got this,” said Steve, fighting back-to-back with Barnes, who must have already come down at some point. Of course.

After the mission, Steve went with Tony to talk to the press, sent Natasha to talk to the police, and asked Barnes to report back to SHIELD with the initial after-action report. Clint could remember when that had been his role, but apparently he had been demoted to… to what? Just another body on the team. Not the best fighter, not the aerial support, not the best spy or the tactical mastermind, or even the only guy with eyes in the sky. Still the best shot, sure, but not by enough for it to matter.

It made a nasty sick feeling lodge in his belly, so he swallowed it down, pushed the thoughts away, and went to see if any of his arrows were still in a good enough condition to make collecting them up worth it.

“You okay?” asked Natasha, appearing out of nowhere to join him as he stalked down the street.

“Peachy,” snapped out Clint. “Think there’s any point in me going to debrief? I might just go get coffee.” Barnes was bound to have more _interesting_ and _helpful_ things to say, after all. Clint was just a grunt these days.

Natasha gave him a frown. “Debrief is mandatory,” she reminded him. “And you’re being a child.”

“I’m only joking,” said Clint, yanking an arrow out of a body with more force than it really needed.

She didn’t look convinced but she got called away to explain something to the police officer in charge of clean-up before she could ask any other questions. 

Clint caught Barnes watching him with a frown from the corner of the street where he’d been reporting to SHIELD. There was something about the dark look in his eyes that made Clint feel like he was being judged, so he gave in to temptation and stuck his tongue out at him, then turned away to go see if he could find any other arrows before escaping back to the Tower.

There was enough time before debrief for him to calm down a bit, especially as he grabbed himself a coffee on the way, and a tray for the others which, whoops, was one short.

“Sorry, Barnes, guess I forgot about you,” he said, putting the last one in front of Sam. Sam must have just found out that Steve had been shot, because he had the worried little frown of ‘my soulmate got hurt’ as he held his hands tightly over Steve’s calf. Steve had his leg propped up on a chair and they were both staring down at the golden glow of healing surrounding the area.

Not for the first time, Clint thought about how much easier post-mission recovery would be if he had a soulmate who could just wave his hands and heal all his injuries. It would certainly make avoiding medical that much easier.

Barnes just shrugged. “Guess it’s kinda hard for you to keep track of the number of people on the team,” he said. “When did you drop out of school again? Sixth grade?”

For a moment Clint actually thought he was going to punch the fucker, then Steve cleared his throat. “Okay, guys, that’s enough of that. Save the banter for later, yeah?” He pulled his leg away from Sam, heading to the front of the room to start the debrief.

Clint slumped down with his coffee, slurping it obnoxiously for a long few seconds, then gave Steve a shit-eating grin. “Sure thing, boss.”

Steve gave him a worried frown but didn’t say anything else, just started going over the mission.

Afterwards, though, he caught up with Clint and took his elbow. “Can we talk?”

Clint let out a very deep breath, because he really just wanted to go have a long shower and a nap. “It’s gonna be quick, right?” he said, letting Steve steer him in the direction of his room.

“I guess that depends on you,” said Steve, which sounded worryingly ominous.

Steve sat him down on his couch, then sat next to him and gave him one of his Captain America Is Concerned looks. “Are you doing okay?”

“Why do people keep asking me that?” asked Clint. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” asked Steve. “Because it feels like you’ve been in a mood for weeks now. Did something happen?”

Did he mean apart from the fact that Clint was slowly but surely being edged out of the Avengers? That he was losing it all just as he’d finally let himself relax and feel at home here, only to find that it was just as temporary as everywhere else Clint had ever lived? He’d felt needed here, felt like he was part of something, like he was Steve’s right-hand guy.

And now Barnes was all those things instead, and Clint was headed back to being on the outside of things, where he really should be used to being.

Clint wasn’t going to say any of that though, because it made sense that Steve would rather have his childhood best friend than some carnie punk who he’d spent most of the first year butting heads with.

“Nope,” he said. “Same old shit, right? AIM, Hydra, Doom...do you ever wonder if they’re as sick of having the same fights over and over as we are?”

Steve snorted. “Pretty sure none of them have the imagination for that. You know you could take a vacation though, right? We’ve got enough hands on the team right now for it to be fine if you wanted to take a few weeks off, hell, even a month or two, if you wanted.”

Clint’s insides went cold. He’d wondered exactly how you got kicked off the Avengers, and it turned out this was how. Getting gently asked by Captain America to go on vacation because you weren’t necessary any more. Well, fuck that, if he wanted Clint gone he’d have to be up-front with him. 

“Nah, I’m good,” Clint forced out, keeping his voice as light as he could. “I’ve never really known what to do with vacation time.”

“Okay,” said Steve. “Well, if you change your mind, or if there's anything else you need, just say. But, Clint, you’ve got to stop being such an asshole all the time, okay? You’re pissing everyone off.”

Pissing Barnes off, he meant. “Born an asshole, die an asshole,” said Clint with a shrug. “A leopard can’t change its spots.”

He stood up before Steve could push the matter any further, because everything inside him felt brittle and one more push was going to shatter it all until he was either yelling or crying, and he didn’t really want to do either in front of Steve. “If that’s it, I’m gonna go shower,” he said. “I stink like I was the one trying to fight in those stupid beekeeper outfits.”

Steve let out a sigh. “Sure, okay,” he said. “See you later.”

Clint left without more than a nod of goodbye, striding down the corridor to his room with his hands clenched tight against all his emotions. Fuck this, fuck Steve, fuck all of them. If they wanted him gone, they’d have to physically kick him out, and he wouldn’t go quietly.

He got to his room and slammed the door behind himself, then collapsed down to the ground, wrapping his arms around his knees. Fuck. He really was losing all this. Barnes was replacing him.

That fucking _asshole_.

****

They usually had team movie nights after a fight but Clint skipped out on the one that night, staying in his room and sulking instead. And yeah, he knew it was sulking, but he felt like he had a damn good reason to.

He tried to work out what he was going to do once he wasn’t an Avenger any more, and he drew a blank. He guessed he’d be available to take on more SHIELD missions, but he didn’t want to have to go back to living in the barracks there after living in the penthouse. Maybe it was time to get his own place. He probably had enough saved to get an apartment in Brooklyn or somewhere a bit less Manhattan. The coffee shops in Brooklyn were better.

And maybe he wouldn’t be able to just wander down the corridor to see Nat, or head into the lounge if he needed company, but he’d have his own space. Be a proper adult with his own place for the first time.

The prospect made him feel vaguely ill, no matter how much he tried to push it into a positive light. He’d be getting out and trying new things, spreading his wings, and it wasn’t like Barnes was going to push him out at SHIELD, not when Clint was the second best agent they had. And he’d never been interested in being better than Nat, anyway.

If he wasn’t living in the Tower anymore, maybe he could get a dog. He should be able to find someone to look after it while he was off on missions, and that way there’d always be someone waiting at home for him. Someone who wasn’t going to replace him just because his BFF turned out to have been a frozen brainwashed assassin for the better part of a century.

Maybe he’d even find his soulmate, although knowing his luck, they’d take one look at Clint and decide they weren’t interested. Clint wasn’t even sure what kind of person would be ideally suited to him or whatever a soulmate was meant to be. Someone with a lot of fucking patience, probably, or maybe really low self-esteem so they didn’t start asking why they couldn’t do better.

Clint rubbed at the place on his chest that always ached when he thought too much about finding his soulmate, like something was missing. He had a bad feeling that it meant his soulmate was dead, because no one else ever talked about a pain, and he couldn’t remember feeling it until he was an adult, at some point in his early twenties.

He’d grown pretty good at shutting that train of thought down though, because mourning over someone he hadn’t even met was pointless. Either he’d meet his soulmate, and everything would be rainbows and puppies and never having to put up with cracked ribs again, or he’d keep going as he was, because he had a pretty good life, all things considered.

Or he had done before Barnes turned up and stole most of it.

Fuck, this was getting Clint nowhere. He was just running round and round the same shitty thoughts over and over, lying in bed and completely incapable of sleeping because he was angry and hurt and so many other emotions that he wasn’t really much good at dealing with.

He’d had enough sleepless nights over the years to know he wasn’t going to get anywhere like that, so he made himself get up and head to the range. He needed to shoot until his shoulders ached and all he saw when he shut his eyes were targets, then maybe he’d manage to sleep.

Except, of course, when he got to the range, Barnes was there. He had a gun in his hands and ear protectors on, but he turned to look as soon as Clint came through the door.

“Barton,” he said, in a quiet, tired voice, and Clint was suddenly flushed full of rage, because what the fuck did this guy have to sound so depressed about when he was taking everything from Clint, even his coping strategy?

“Fuck you,” Clint said and left, heading back up to the main lounge to find a bottle of whiskey. Getting drunk was just as good a coping strategy as shooting, right? At least he knew he’d pass out once he’d had enough, so he’d get sleep of a sort.

****

Clint spent the next couple of days keeping out of everyone’s way, because he knew when he wasn’t in a fit state for polite company. It felt like just about anyone who came in range of his mouth was going to get shit from him right now, not just fucking Barnes.

It didn’t escape his notice that no one asked after him, or came to find out if he was doing okay.

He got called into SHIELD for a mission briefing and it was actually a relief. Getting away from the other Avengers and doing something on his own, something he knew he was good at, felt like just the thing to clear out some of the mess in his brain.

Or it did right up until he walked into the briefing room to find Coulson, Maria Hill and fucking Barnes in it.

Of course. The bastard couldn’t even let Clint have this without horning in.

“What’s he doing here?” he asked, without sitting down.

“The same thing you are, if you’d sit down,” said Hill. “Getting a briefing.”

“He’s not SHIELD,” said Clint, not moving.

“Not technically,” agreed Coulson. “Not yet, anyway. He’s helping us out on this one.”

Barnes eyed Clint tiredly. “I didn’t know you were going to be my partner,” he said, sounding just as pissed as Clint was. At least Clint wasn’t the only one mad about it.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said Hill, standing up. “Sit your ass down, Hawkeye, and act like a goddamn professional. I don’t give a damn if you’ve got your panties all wadded up, this isn’t a kindergarten.”

Clint moodily slunk across to one of the empty chairs and sat down. So much for having a chance to get his head clear.

“Right then,” said Hill. “We’ve been looking into Hydra recruitment, and we think we’ve found one of their pipelines for radicalising people into becoming agents.” 

She flicked a handful of personnel files onto the table and Clint picked up the nearest one. It was for some lowlife Hydra drone, no one high enough to have any interesting intel. It looked like he’d been picked up on a raid on one of their bases, with a mild concussion and some electrical burns. Natasha had taken him down, then.

He picked up another one, which had a different name and photo but the same basic story. Used as cannon fodder by the Hydra higher-ups, captured on an Avengers mission - this one with an arrow wound to his right arm, which made Clint smirk although he didn’t remember shooting the guy. All Hydra minions looked the same after a while, though.

“These aren’t important guys,” said Barnes, who had been flicking through some of the files as well. “None of them are even high enough to have any kind of clearance.”

“No,” agreed Coulson, “but they are the kind of guys that Hydra is built on. Without all the indoctrinated foot soldiers to throw at anyone getting too close, the head guys would have nothing to base their plans on.”

Clint nodded slowly, flipping over the next folder. This guy should not wear that much black, it washed his whole complexion out. The bleached blond hair didn’t help either. “Okay, but there’s always plenty of these idiots just waiting to be told they’re building a better future or whatever.”

Which was what SHIELD had told him when they’d picked him up and offered him a job, but at least they’d been right. Well, apart from the whole infiltrated-by-Hydra thing, but that had all been sorted out now. Probably. Shit, Clint had more in common with these guys than he’d like to think. That was depressing.

“Indeed,” agreed Coulson. “We want to try and cut off the sources that Hydra is using to recruit. These men here,” he said, gesturing at the folders, “were all in the US Army before joining Hydra but they all came from different units, different regiments, did different tours. The only thing they all have in common is that they all went to basic training at Fort Lynch.”

“You think Hydra have a guy there recruiting them?” asked Barnes.

Clint bit his lip to stop himself from glaring at the guy for asking the question that Clint had been about to ask.

“Exactly that,” said Maria. “We haven’t been able to get any of them to talk, but it makes sense that Hydra would let the Army train their recruits for them.”

Clint nodded slowly. “They get to them young, fold it all in with the Army training and how that breaks you down, then just keep tabs on them until they get out the Army, maybe tell them they’re part of of a secret organisation to make them feel special, then pick them up once they’ve had combat experience and set them to guarding bases and whatever other low level shit they need done.”

“Makes sense,” said Barnes, chucking the folder he’d been flicking through back on the table. “You got any idea who on the base is part of it?”

“Unfortunately not,” said Coulson. “They’ll have been entrenched there for decades, from what we’ve worked out, so they must have had several different personnel there over the years, probably a lot of them. We want you two to go in and identify everyone involved so we can bury the whole operation in one go.”

Clint had a horrible, sinking feeling. “And, by ‘go in’, you mean…?”

Hill gave him a beaming smile. “You’ve both enlisted in the US Army, boys. Time to be all you can be.”

Clint groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” 

“Nope,” said Hill, still grinning as if this was the best part of her day. It probably was, Clint had always suspected there was something a little too sadistic in the way she liked handing out shitty assignments. “You’re due to start basic training on Monday.” She chucked them each another folder. “Just enough time to memorise your backstories.”

“Isn’t basic training nine weeks long?” asked Clint, desperately, as he realised just how long he was going to be working ridiculously closely with Barnes. “We shouldn’t be away from the Avengers that long, surely there’s other agents-”

“We already cleared it with Captain Rogers,” said Coulson. “He agreed this mission was a priority, and that they could cope for a couple of months without you two.”

A couple of months. Oh god.

“Fucking Steve,” Barnes muttered under his breath, and for the first time that Clint could remember, he agreed with him.

****

Fort Lynch was in Virginia, nearly a seven hour drive from New York. Somehow it got decided that Barnes and Clint should drive down together rather than taking any of the much better modes of transport that would be quicker, easier and, crucially, not involve Clint being in a tiny metal box for seven hours with fucking Barnes.

“You’re meant to be two friends who signed up together,” Coulson reminded Clint as he handed him the car keys. “It makes sense you’d drive down together, and you wouldn’t have the money for a flight.”

“So let us take a quinjet down and we’ll drive the last half hour or so,” said Clint, trying to hand the keys back. “C’mon, they’re not going to double-check we definitely went all the way through New Jersey. C’mon, man. _New Jersey_.”

Coulson just gave him a bland smile and stepped away. “You can spend the time making sure you’ve both got your stories straight,” he said, then disappeared back inside the base. 

Clint turned to look at Barnes, who just glowered back at him. Clint felt his shoulders slump in defeat. “I’m driving,” he insisted.

Barnes shrugged. “The whole way? Sure, knock yourself out. Means I can sleep through New Jersey.”

Fucking asshole.

Barnes did try to quiz Clint on their covers for the first couple of miles, which was annoying as hell.

“How’d we meet?”

“You caught me fucking your mom,” snapped Clint.

Barnes doggedly persisted. “We worked together in construction for a couple of years. Why’d we decide to join up?”

“We’re excited about getting to commit war crimes,” said Clint, fumbling with his phone to jack it into the radio, so he wouldn’t have to listen to all this crap the whole way. It was like doing a mission with a rookie, Jesus.

“Close,” said Barnes. “The construction company went under and we couldn’t get any other jobs, so we decided it was time to go fight terrorist bastards. When’s your-”

He got cut off as Clint got his music on, turning it up loud so he couldn’t hear him anymore. Barnes just sighed and turned to glare at the road, which was a massive improvement as far as Clint was concerned.

They stopped for gas outside Philadelphia, and they’d already been travelling too long. Barnes went inside to get some snacks while Clint filled the car up, and when he came back, he had two coffees as well. Clint was half-expecting him to just chug both of them in front of Clint, but he handed one over to him.

“Look,” he said, “I get you don’t like me, and I can’t say I’m real keen on you either, but this is important to me. I want to prove that I can do this kinda mission as well as just blowing shit up. Could we maybe call a truce, or just not be complete fucking assholes for it?”

Clint took a sip of the coffee before replying, to make sure it didn’t have salt in it or any other nasty shit. It was exactly how he’d have made it for himself, black as tar and with slightly too much sugar.

“I’m always completely professional on a mission,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’m gonna play at being your buddy just fine, once we’re there.”

Barnes gave him a nod. “Okay, good,” he said.

“Of course, we’re not there yet,” added Clint, and gave him a grin that made Barnes’s shoulders slump.

After that, Clint changed up his tactics. He turned the music down a bit, to a normal volume, to lull Barnes into a false sense of security, then casually put one track on repeat and started to time how long it would take before Barnes to crack.

It took longer than he’d have figured. They were on the ninth playthrough of _I’ll Make A Man Out Of You_ before Barnes reached out and jabbed at the radio harder than he needed to and made it stop.

“Hey!” protested Clint. “I was listening to that! Getting myself all psyched up for the Army training musical montage, you know?”

“I don’t know,” said Barnes with gritted teeth, “And I don’t wanna know. I can tell you right now that being ‘mysterious as the dark side of the moon’ isn’t going to do jack shit to help you get through basic training.”

“Oh yeah, you already did all this once,” said Clint. “That was back in the dark ages, though, I bet it’s changed since then.”

“Bet it hasn’t,” said Barnes. “Being yelled at all day and made to march around a parade ground like that never helped anyone. It’s all a load of horseshit.”

“Maybe you just think that because you never managed the mysterious thing,” said Clint, and turned the music back on, singing happily along with the chorus as it came around again.

Barnes just squeezed his eyes tight shut and rubbed at his temples.

Clint did put on different music after a couple more repetitions, because even he couldn’t cope with a Disney song on repeat the whole way down to Virginia. He did make sure to play it about once every half hour though, just to keep Barnes on his toes.

“Am I ever gonna get a turn picking the music?” asked Barnes with a weary tone of defeat as they were circling around Washington DC.

“Nope,” said Clint. “You said you were gonna sleep, remember?”

“How the hell am I meant to sleep with that going round and round?” muttered Barnes, then actually banged his head against the car window. He did it gently, but Clint took the hint. He didn’t want to break the guy completely after all, at least not until after the mission. He turned the music down a notch, and left it to play without adding _I’ll Make A Man Out Of You_ again.

Not that Barnes appeared to trust that, if the way he tensed every time a song with a similar intro came on. It was possible Clint had already broken him.

****

The sun was starting to go down when Clint pulled up by the side of the road about half an hour away from the base. “Time to get into character,” he said, when Barnes shifted and just stared at him, dead-eyed from the long journey. Or maybe from listening to Clint’s music for seven hours, but the guy had been trained to resist psychological torture, right?

Barnes let out a sigh, but sat up and got out the car, stretching his arms up in a way that made his shirt ride up and, seriously, did he have to be such an asshole _and_ have abs like that? God, Clint hated him so much.

He busied himself turning off the music and then deleting it all off the phone he’d been using, because his mission persona wouldn’t be caught dead listening to any of the stuff Clint had put on. 

SHIELD didn’t know how exactly Hydra were choosing to recruit certain trainees, but it seemed like a fairly good bet that they’d go through their personal belongings to get a sense of who they were. The cell phones he and Barnes had been issued with had been set up to show they’d both been on various right-wing websites and messaging boards, and both belonged to a WhatsApp chat called ‘Proud Patriots’. Clint had flicked through the history for it and, frankly, if that didn’t convince Hydra that he was prime to be brainwashed into becoming a fervent neo-Nazi foot soldier, then nothing would.

He rolled out his shoulders and glanced back at where Barnes was rummaging in the trunk before pulling off his favourite purple BTE hearing aids and replacing them with the nearly-invisible Starktech ones that he wore for missions. They weren’t completely unnoticeable, but as long as no one stared too closely at his ears, they should be fine. Plus, Stark had made them so they never needed to be charged and could be left in while he slept, which was going to be useful for this mission.

He glanced back again to see Barnes had pulled his shirt off completely and was fighting a battle with the cover for his metal arm. Clint just sat and watched for a while, trying not to snigger too obviously when it became clear that Barnes wasn’t going to be able to pull it up one-handed over his elbow.

After a few minutes, Barnes stopped and let out a deep breath, staring up at the sky for a couple of seconds as if looking for patience.

“You gonna help, or you just gonna watch?”

“I’m quite enjoying watching,” said Clint.

Barnes sent him a dark look. “I thought you were going to be a professional about the mission stuff,” he said, pointedly.

Clint let out a sigh, then got out of the car and went over to him. “Come on then,” he said, wondering why the hell Coulson and Hill had sent the two guys who’d most obviously fail a recruitment medical exam. Almost any other SHIELD agent could have done this without needing fancy Starktech gear just to get through the first stage.

The camouflage for Barnes’s arm was a lot like a shoulder-length rubber glove, tight enough to need to be rolled on over the metal plates. Even with two hands, Clint found it a hassle to pull all the way up without leaving any folds or weird lumps.

“Jesus, you need to tell Tony that he can do better than this,” he muttered, yanking the last bit up over Barnes’s shoulder. “What kind of a tech genius even is he?”

Barnes snorted, smoothing down the top of the cover so that it lay flat and blended in with his skin. “Yeah, he doesn’t take criticism so well.” He flexed the arm, clenching his fist and holding it out straight. There was a weird and unpleasant-looking ripple all along the fake skin, and just like that, it was completely indistinguishable from his other arm. Skin, veins, smattering of dark hair; it all looked completely real.

Okay, maybe Clint was impressed. He wasn’t ever going to tell Tony that though, and definitely not Barnes.

“If you’re done making yourself look pretty,” he said, turning away while Barnes pulled his shirt back on. “Let’s go do this thing.”

****

Not a lot happened on their first couple of days at Fort Lynch. Well, not quite true, a lot happened but it was all just administrative housekeeping kinds of things. They got given temporary bunks in the Basic Training Reception Battalion along with the other new recruits, who arrived in dribs and drabs over the next couple of days.

The admin officers went back over all their paperwork to make sure it was in order, asking all the same questions that they would have answered when they were recruited, if SHIELD hadn’t faked that bit for them.

“Name?”

“Frank Clifton.” 

The administrator gave him a swift look with narrowed eyes, which meant he hadn’t given the right answer. “ _Full_ name.”

Clint sighed. “Francis Nathaniel Clifton,” he said, tiredly. He had a feeling Maria Hill thought she was funny.

“Date of birth?”

“5th September 1987,” which shaved a couple of years off Clint’s age, but still put him in an older age bracket for starting an Army career. But then, it wasn’t as if he was worried about being able to keep up with the younger guys, not after a decade of being the best of the best.

“Have you met your soulmate yet?”

“Nope,” said Clint, wondering if that was the only question he’d be answering truthfully. “Unless you count my old dog, of course.”

Not that Clint had ever had a dog, but there had been a few around at the circus, and he was pretty sure any of them would have been a good fit for him as a soulmate.

The administrator didn’t bother looking up from his computer screen to acknowledge the joke. “Are you aware that lying about your soulmate status when you join the United States Army is grounds for instant dishonourable discharge?”

“Yup,” said Clint, giving up on trying to make this better for either of them.

After that, they got issued all their new kit and given a long lecture about what would happen to them if they lost or damaged any of it, then spent a few long hours putting their names on absolutely everything. Barnes had been given the bunk next to Clint’s, but there were a handful of others on nearby bunks doing the same thing at the same time, so Clint didn’t have to try and make conversation with him.

“You guys known each other long?” asked the guy on the bunk on the other side of Barnes’s, who was diligently marking ‘Pascal’ on all his new belongings. He was a skinny guy who Clint had a feeling was going to have to work hard on bulking out if he wanted to make it through the fitness test at the end of basic.

“A few years,” said Clint, glancing at Barnes like he was trying to think back. “What? Four or five?”

“Something like that,” said Barnes. His cover name was Bryan Jameson, which made Clint grumpily wonder if Hill liked him more than she liked Clint. “I joined the company in, what? 2012?”

“Yeah, just in the summer,” agreed Clint.

“And you decided to sign up together?” asked another guy, who had a bit of a sharp edge to his grin. He was called Tanzer. “That’s so sweet.”

“Fuck off,” said Barnes, rolling his eyes at him. “After the company went under, wasn’t like we had much choice.”

“Yeah, that was a shitshow,” agreed Clint, figuring now was as good a time as any to start making it clear that they were exactly the kind of guys Hydra would want to recruit. “Fucking illegals came in and undercut everyone like fucking roaches.”

Pascal flinched slightly at that but Tanzer just nodded, which matched up with what Clint had assumed about his character. “Yeah, that shit’s happening all over.”

“Whole fucking industry’s fucked,” added Barnes. “Just full of spics cutting corners while decent Americans are forced out. Who even wants to live in a place built by a bunch of illegals? Not me.”

“Place’d crumble around your fucking ears,” agreed another guy, who was young enough for Clint to be thinking of him as a kid even though he already had a buzzcut and a bunch of tattoos like he’d been playing soldier dress-up before he even got to the camp. Clint nodded at him, reflecting that the worst thing about going undercover was having to hang out with assholes.

“We figured if they were undermining the country from the inside, it was time for patriots to step up and protect what’s ours,” added Clint, and there were nods from Tanzer and the young guy. Pascal just put his head down and kept writing his name on his kit, ignoring the conversation.

A moment later a sergeant came in to whisk away anyone who needed to get shots which, thankfully, didn’t include Clint. At this point in his life, after all the travelling he’d done and the shit he’d been exposed to, he wasn’t sure there were any shots left he hadn’t had. Barnes didn’t need any either, what with being hyped up on Hydra’s knock-off serum and whatever else they’d done to him. 

They didn’t get to just hang around while the others went, though, because another sergeant turned up to take anyone left along to get their hair cut.

For Clint, that didn’t mean a whole lot because he never let his hair get much longer than a couple of inches anyway, but it was only when he was in line behind Barnes, watching some guy’s carefully groomed mullet disappear, that he realised it meant Barnes’s greasy shoulder-length mess was going to be gone.

He poked a finger into Barnes’s back until he turned around. “You ready to say goodbye to that rat’s nest?” he asked. “Or are you about to change your mind about this whole thing and fuck off home?”

Barnes rolled his eyes. “Fuck off,” he snapped and turned back round, but Tanzer had already picked up on it.

“Hey, Jameson, right? How long’ve you had it long? Is this gonna be some kinda emotional farewell?”

“Oh, he’s very attached,” said Clint, giving Barnes his best shit-eating grin. “Gonna be like losing a member of the family. The greasy unwashed homeless uncle, maybe.”

“Fuck off!” repeated Barnes. “Just cos I’ve got a sense of style.”

Tanzer snorted. “Oh sure, a sense of girl style maybe. How’s your mommy gonna give you pretty braids after this?”

Clint laughed along with his joke, but he couldn’t help feeling a sense of depression that this was going to be the kind of humour he’d be exposed to for the next few weeks. Fuck, he’d forgotten how much he hated hanging out with these kinds of assholes.

He and Barnes ended up in the barber chairs at the same time, so it wasn’t until they’d got out and Clint was running his hand across the soft stubble on his head that he caught sight of Barnes. 

God, he wouldn’t even have recognised him. He looked kinda stupid, in the same way that pretty much every single guy coming out of the barber room did, all of them running their hands over their heads and frowning. 

Barnes, though, fuck that fucking asshole, somehow also made it look hot. Without all the tangled mess of his hair hanging everywhere and drawing attention, it was suddenly really clear just how good his bone structure was. His cheekbones particularly stood out, but his jawline also looked super sharp and square, exactly like an old-style film star.

God, Clint hated him so much.

****

The last of the new recruits arrived the next morning, a Hispanic-looking guy called Huerta who Clint didn’t smile at when he came in and dumped his stuff on the last spare bunk, because Frank Clifton was definitely too racist for that.

The other guys got up and started introducing themselves, so he just sat back and took in all the names to make sure he had them right. The kid with all the tattoos was Everill, the guy in the bed next to him who spent half his time posturing and half his time looking like he wanted to find somewhere quiet to cry was Jones, the guy shaking Huerta’s hand right now was Ziskind and-

“Oh shit!” said Huerta, bouncing back away from Ziskind, and then just staring at him. “Shit, no way!”

Ziskind was staring right back at him. “You heard it too? It’s- fuck. Fucking hell, I was not expecting that.”

Huerta snorted a panicked-sounding laugh. “I don’t think anyone ever really does.”

“What the fuck’s with you two?” asked Tanzer.

“I think they just chimed,” said Pascal, eyes darting back and forth between Huerta and Ziskind like he could see the soulmate bond in the air.

“Ah, shit’s sake,” said Tanzer. “Please tell me we’re not going to have to listen to you assholes fuck all night.”

The commotion had attracted the attention of the sergeant who was currently supervising them, Sergeant Steiger, and he came striding over. “Got a pair of soulmates, have we?” he asked, eyeing them both up as they continued to gape at each other. “Well ain’t that nice for you? You’ve both just gone and made this whole thing twice as hard on yourselves.”

Huerta pulled his eyes away from Ziskind’s face. “You’re not gonna kick us out?”

“Oh no,” said Steiger. “We’ve got _protocols_ for this, happens more than you might think. As of right now, you two will be doing everything together: same unit, same training, same watches. The only thing you will not be doing will be fucking, because the ban on sexual contact between recruits during training most definitely still applies to you, although you’ll probably be too tired for that kinda thing anyway, if we’re doing our jobs right. And most importantly,” he finished, “from now on, you succeed or fail together. The US Army does not take one half of soulmate pairs. Either you both make it, or you’re both gone.”

“Oh shit,” said Huerta, looking over Ziskind’s physique as if looking for weaknesses.

“Exactly,” said Steiger, grinning at him. “And now you need to toddle off to the administration team and update your records before lunch, because it is a dischargeable offence to give the US Army incorrect information about your soulmate status. Go on! Hop to it!”

Huerta and Ziskind disappeared together, still looking freaked out, and the rest of the room erupted into a low buzz of conversation.

“Jesus, what a mindfuck,” said Everill. “As if there wasn’t enough to try and get our heads around over the next couple of weeks.”

“There’s no way they’re not gonna end up fucking,” said Tanzer. “Bet you guys ten bucks someone walks in on them playing hide the sausage in the showers before we’re even in week two.”

Clint looked over at Barnes, who was looking after the two new soulmates with a faint frown. He glanced away at just the wrong moment to catch Clint’s eye, but he just glared at him before looking back down at his bag.

“Has everyone else here touched?” asked Pascal. “We’re not gonna have any more surprises in a day or two, are we?”

Tanzer reached out and slapped a heavy hand onto his shoulder, hard enough to make him stumble forward. “Sorry, guess I’m not gonna go faggy for your ass,” he said cheerfully, then turned back to the mess he’d made of his bunk.

Pascal sent a glare at him but didn’t say anything else.

Clint sat back on his bunk and glanced around the room. Most of the guys were ready for the next phase by now, which meant they were just sitting around chatting. Half of them didn’t really seem to have heard the lectures they’d already received about tidiness and their stuff was strewn all around their bunks. Clint had a feeling they were going to be in for a nasty shock once training began in earnest and they started having inspections. 

Clint’s own stuff was mostly tidy, but he’d made sure to make enough of a mess to look like everyone else’s. Everyone else’s, that was, except Barnes’s, whose kit was neat as a pin, and who had made his bed up to military standards.

“Alright, chow time!” called Sergeant Steiger, and there was a general movement for the door. 

Clint caught Barnes’s elbow and held him back as the room emptied.

“What?” asked Barnes, once they were alone. “You see something?”

Clint shook his head. “Only a fucking neatfreak,” he said, gesturing at Barnes’s bunk. “You need to mess that up a bit.”

Barnes frowned at it. “They told us to keep our shit tidy.”

“Yeah,” agreed Clint, “but they’re not expecting us to really know how just yet. That shit right there screams ‘I’ve done this before’. Especially the corners on your bedding, Jesus, dude. The point of this isn’t to get gold star ratings all the way through, it’s to blend in.” He gestured at the pile of crap smothering Tanzer’s bed, and the random socks scattered between Everill’s and Jones’s. “You’re not blending in.”

Barnes looked back at his bunk as if seeing it for the first time, then nodded. “Okay,” he said, and went back to mess up the sheets and pull a couple of things out of his bag.

Clint waited for him and then they headed over to the mess hall together.

“Thanks,” said Barnes, in an awkward tone that probably meant he found being polite to Clint just as weird as Clint found hearing it.

Clint shrugged. “Yeah, well, we’re like those guys,” he said, nodding at where Huerta and Ziskind were trotting into the mess hall together ahead of them. “We succeed or fail this mission together. If you get made, my cover’s blown too.”

“Right,” said Barnes, with a sigh, “of course. God forbid you help me without an ulterior motive.”

Clint just grinned at him, and darted in front to make sure he got in the line for food first.

****

That afternoon they had their initial set of physical-fitness testing, to judge how close they were to the standards they’d need to achieve by the end of training. It was all fairly boring stuff and the requirements were all well within Clint’s abilities. Hell, he probably could have broken most of the camp records with only a little bit of effort, and if he could, Barnes definitely could. They both held back though, coming in somewhere in the top third of the unit but not right at the top, and not yet where they’d need to be to pass the final tests. Neither of them wanted to stick out like that.

“Don’t worry, lads,” said Steiger, grinning at them all. “We’ll have you sweating enough that you’ll be able to pass all these tests in your sleep in just a few weeks.”

Clint tried to look like he was thrilled by the idea but doing push ups and sit ups and running a few miles were far from his idea of a fun work-out. There was a reason he liked doing circus tricks and archery shots, after all.

Still, there should be plenty of assault courses. Clint always kinda liked those.

Huerta and Ziskind got whisked again after that, for the initial soulmate medical checks, to make sure their biorhythms had synced up properly. Now that they’d heard the chime, their brainwaves and heartbeats would match up for the rest of their lives, and they’d fall asleep and wake up at the same time, no matter how far apart they were.

That was the one bit of having a soulmate Clint wasn’t as keen on. His sleeping patterns had been fucked up for years, he didn’t really want to subject his soulmate to his unexpected mid-afternoon naps, or the way his insomnia always kicked in at the worst time.

Dinner was heavy on fat and grease, just how Clint liked it, so he loaded his plate up before sitting down opposite Barnes.

“You know, I wasn’t expecting the food to be this good,” said a kid sitting next to Barnes, who was called Havelka. He was young and wide-eyed in a way that kept making Clint think of a baby rabbit. He didn’t think he was likely to make it all the way through. “I always heard Army food was pretty shit.”

“It will be,” said Barnes. “This is just softening you up. And seeing who’s stupid enough to load up on fat when they’ve just been told how far they have to go to be fit enough to pass the final tests.” He gave Clint a pointed look.

Cint just grinned at him and shovelled another forkful into his mouth. “I’m a growing boy,” he said, through a mouthful of half-chewed food, which made Barnes grimace with disgust.

“I don’t know,” said Tanzer, “seems like you’ve done all the growing you need to there.” 

Clint gave him the smug look of a guy who was taller than Captain America.

“Seems to me,” added Tanzer, “that you’re the one who needs growing up a bit taller, Jameson.”

Barnes rolled his eyes at him. “He wasn’t talking about how tall he is,” he said. “He’s hoping if he eats enough burgers, he’ll grow more than a two-inch cock.”

“Oh ho, you gonna let him get away with that?” Tanzer asked Clint, eyes glittering at the idea of causing trouble.

Clint just rolled his eyes, and finished his mouthful. “He’s just pissy because my two-inch cock was more than enough to satisfy his mom.”

For a split-second he thought he’d gone too far, what with Barnes’s entire family having died while he was off being a brainwashed assassin, but then Barnes laughed. “You fucking wish,” he said. “My mom wouldn’t have touched a guy like you with a fucking bargepole.”

“Yeah?” asked Tanzer. “Cuz if she wants she can fuck my bargepole.” He grabbed at his crotch and let out a bray of laughter and god, Clint wanted to deck him so badly, he really hoped he got the chance.

Barnes just rolled his eyes and let it go, so Clint turned his attention back to his dinner.

Not before catching the wide-eyed look on Havelka’s face though, clearly not used to talk that crude while he was eating. Well, he was going to have to get used to it quickly, or risk getting a reputation as an innocent that he’d find hard to shake.

There wasn’t much to do that evening, so most of them sat around finding out about each other. Clint made sure to drop in a few bigoted statements, and Barnes did the same, which definitely didn’t win them any fans amongst the decent human beings in the room, but made Tanzer and Everill decide they were all going to be best buddies. Fantastic.

Sergeant Steiger came in around nine and made them all go to bed. “Trust me, guys, you’re gonna want to savour this last night of sleep,” he said, and Clint believed him.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning they were woken up an hour or two before dawn and shouted at by a whole bevy of sergeants and staff sergeants while they packed their kitbags and stripped their beds, most of them still half-asleep and looking a bit shell-shocked. They were quick-marched to the mess hall to grab breakfast, which they barely had time to swallow down before being harassed back outside again. Their kitbags were all taken off in a truck and they were marched across the site, half of them still trying to work out which leg to lead with.

They reached their new barracks, three low buildings built around a parade square, but they didn’t stop marching. The sergeants kept taking them around the square in circles, shouting at any guy who put a foot wrong.

“We’re gonna keep this up until you make it all the way around the square without any of you assholes fucking up!” announced one of the staff sergeants on their third go round. “Pull yourselves together! You’re in the fucking US Army now and fucking _kindergarteners_ know their rights and lefts. You there, short guy in the middle with the squint, that is the wrong fucking foot!”

Clint gritted his teeth, and kept marching. Damn, he really should have found an excuse not to go on this mission. He could have broken a rib or two, no one would have been surprised. Or maybe invented a family emergency, he could have made some family up for that. Or, shit, just gone AWOL and lived with the consequences. Anything would have been better than two months of this shit.

When they finally all managed to get the marching right and were allowed to stop, they were divided into three platoons. Clint and Barnes ended up together, which Clint had expected, but they were also with Tanzer and Everill, which he had been hoping to avoid. Pascal, Huerta and Ziskind also got sorted into their platoon, which wouldn’t have been so bad if Clint hadn’t been playing the kind of guy likely to be an asshole to all of them, along with Havelka, who kinda looked like he was going to pee himself with either excitement or terror, it was hard to tell which.

“I am Staff Sergeant Albini!” announced the largest and most shouty of the staff sergeants. “I am going to be in charge of your platoon, which means I am in charge of every single thing you do. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Staff Sergeant!” they all obediently parroted back at him.

“Louder!” he demanded, like this was some kind of rock concert and he wasn’t impressed with the applause. They repeated it louder.

“When I tell you to jump, you jump!” he continued, and Clint let himself drift off a little because he’d heard this kind of speech before, and not just in the movies. There were a couple of sergeants standing next to Albini: Steiger and a redhead whose name Clint hadn’t caught yet. Across the square, he could see the other two platoons getting similar welcoming speeches from their own staff sergeants. Most of them still looked pretty blitzed by it all, and he wondered how long it would take before being shouted at from the moment they woke up would become second nature.

“Do you understand?!” yelled Albini again, and Clint joined in with another chorus of, “Yes, Staff Sergeant!”

How would he arrange recruitment here if he were Hydra? If they wanted to work out which recruits were worth having before they approached them, they’d need someone close to them all to work out who was a fledgling neo-Nazi. Clint figured at least one of the sergeants needed to be Hydra, probably one for each platoon. He eyed Albini, trying to decide if he was a secret neo-Nazi, but mostly he just seemed very, very shouty.

Maybe Clint should find a quiet place to turn his hearing aids down at some point. It didn’t seem like he’d miss anything other than a headache if he did.

While the shouting continued, the truck pulled up and unloaded their kitbags into the middle of the parade ground, all heaped up together. They sat there while Albini listed everything the recruits were allowed to do (anything he ordered them to do) and everything they weren’t allowed to do (anything else). He then went along the rows, making anyone not wearing the uniform correctly do ten push ups, which ended up being three-quarters of the platoon. Clint apparently hadn’t tucked his pants into his boots correctly, so he ended up in the dirt but Barnes, he noticed with irritation, didn’t. So much for blending in as one of the guys who didn’t know what they were doing.

Once all the staff sergeants were satisfied that everyone had had their fill of being shouted at, they were directed to grab their kit bags.

“You have five minutes to all get the correct bag and be standing back in your lines!” announced Albini, then blew his whistle.

Everyone ran straight at the pile and there was very nearly a riot as they started going through the bags, chucking them aside looking for their own and squabbling amongst themselves. Maybe a tenth of them had their bags in hand when Albini blew the whistle again, but no one was back in the lines.

“That was fucking horrible!” shouted Albini. “We will do that again! All bags back in the pile.”

The guys who actually had their kitbags were pretty loath to give them up, but the sergeants took them all off them and chucked them back on the pile, moving it all around so they were buried again.

“You will have another five minutes!” said Albini, and there was a group sigh. “And let me tell you now, that if we have to keep repeating this over and over, we will do so. None of the other sessions this morning will be cut short to allow for the wasted time so it _will_ be coming out of your lunch!”

Fucking fantastic.

Clint eyed the pile of bags, wondering if there was any point in even trying. Albini blew the whistle, and everyone converged on them again, already starting to fight.

“Stop!” shouted Barnes, and Clint turned to stare at him as he waded right into the centre. “Don’t be fucking idiots, we need to work together. Everyone grab a bag, any bag, then see if you can find the owner.”

Everyone stared at him and for a moment it felt like there was about to be a debate over it, so Clint just grabbed the nearest bag. “Donaldson, T,” he read off the label.

“That’s mine!” said an excited voice from the other side of the pile, so he started to jog around to hand it over, just as everyone else started grabbing bags and yelling out names.

The last guy got his bag and sprinted back to his place in the parade lines just as Albini blew his whistle. Clint was vaguely impressed. If it had been anyone else, he’d probably have told them so, but he didn’t think Barnes needed his ego inflated.

Albini came over and gave Barnes a scrutinising look. “What’s your name?”

“Jameson, Staff Sergeant,” snapped Barnes crisply and, Jesus, could the guy stop being the perfect soldier for one fucking second?

“You done this before, Jameson?” asked Albini.

Barnes hesitated, clearly realising how badly he was fucking up, then said, “Yes, Staff Sergeant. In the Boy Scouts.”

“The Boy Scouts,” repeated Albini. “Those little shits steal all our best ideas.”

He turned away. “Alright, men!” he shouted. “You have your kit, behind you are your barracks, and most of you are disrespecting your shiny new uniforms by wearing them incorrectly! Find your bunk, fix yourselves up, and be back here in fifteen minutes for another parade. Anyone still not wearing the uniform correctly will be doing fifty push ups! Fall out!”

Clint let out a long breath before turning to go into the barracks. God, this was going to be a long fucking mission.

****

The first week of basic training seemed to stretch on forever as Clint tried to get himself into the right mindset to just ride it all out. They were up and breakfasted by 5am, cramming food in as fast as possible to get to the parade ground before Albini started shouting. The days were filled with hours and hours of drilling, or being taken off on runs or hikes in the woods, endless kit inspections where they got yelled at for tiny mistakes, and group punishments because god forbid one guy should mess up without all of them suffering.

Clint took to giving Barnes a pointed look at least once a day to remind him to fuck up, because without that reminder he just did everything perfectly first time, as if he didn’t even have to think about it.

“I thought we went over this,” Clint muttered to him as they all remade their beds because at least three guys still didn’t seem to get how sheets worked, and if one bed was wrong, Sergeant Steiger gleefully went around the room ripping everyone’s covers off and made them all start over. “The point of this mission isn’t perfection.”

Barnes scowled at him. He’d been assigned the bunk above Clint’s, because of course Clint wasn’t even going to get away from the asshole while they slept. “I know,” he growled, sounding frustrated. “I guess it’s not as easy for me to fuck up as it is for you.”

Just for that, Clint tugged at the end of Barnes’s blanket once they were all standing by their beds for inspection, ruining the perfect, neat lines of it.

“Oho, is our little Boy Scout running into trouble?” asked Steiger, grinning at Barnes as he made it around to their bunks. “Looks like we’ll be doing this again!” He ripped the sheets off Barnes’s bunk and Barnes twitched, sending a glare at Clint that he just grinned in response at. He’d done it for the _mission_ after all, Barnes didn’t get to complain.

Barnes picked up the nickname ‘Boy Scout’ after that, which Clint privately thought was hilarious, although Barnes didn’t seem to mind. 

“There’s not many Boy Scouts with a kill record like yours,” Clint commented one day when they were cleaning the bathrooms.

“Ted Bundy was a Boy Scout,” said Barnes.

“Bullshit,” said Clint, although he had no idea, and then, “How the fuck do you even know that?”

Barnes just shrugged. “Don’t be jealous just because people know who I am and you’re just in my shadow,” he said, which struck a little too close to home for Clint to want to carry on talking.

The other thing they did a lot of during the first week was sit in classrooms and be lectured at about the command structure and the Army core values, and as well as more general lessons that could be summed up as ‘don’t be a prick’, covering things like sexual harassment and race relations.

Except, of course, Clint was there to get identified as a prick by other pricks, so he couldn’t just sit quietly in the back and look engaged while marking down the names of anyone who rolled their eyes at any point so he quietly could corner them later and make sure the lesson stuck, like he had during the SHIELD ones. Instead, he had to be one of the guys rolling his eyes.

He and Barnes made a point of making little muttered comments as they passed by the trainers after each lecture, sliding in as much casual racism, Islamophobia, sexism, toxic masculinity and vague comments about the strong being entitled to take whatever they wanted from the weak as they could. It didn’t make them particularly popular with guys in the unit like Pascal, but Clint figured those were the guys who’d be happy to have Hydra eradicated from the base and so could just put up with the crap it took to do that.

And if they weren’t, well, fuck them, he’d be back in a billonaire’s penthouse in Manhattan by then, living the high life.

Unless he got back to find that he’d been pushed out of the Avengers completely.

Nope, he wasn’t thinking about that.

“Well, that was a fucking waste of time,” muttered Tanzer, after an hour long session on treating others with dignity and respect, with a heavy emphasis on not being a dick to civillians.

“Whole load of hippy crap,” agreed Everill, who seemed to have decided that Tanzer was his role model.

“Right,” agreed Barnes, eyes flicking to where the trainer was closing down his Powerpoint, only a few feet away. He raised his voice just enough to carry to him. “If you want respect, you gotta take it, and if you’re not able to do that, well…”

“There’s probably a reason for it,” agreed Clint. “And I’m not gonna go inconveniencing myself, or my unit, for someone that don’t deserve it. Besides, the kinda wars we have these days, the civilian you pander to one day is gonna be the jihadist bomber blowing up your barracks the next.”

Sergeant Steiger was standing by the door as they passed, long with Sergeant Randolph, who was large, redheaded, and had a quiet aura of authority that contrasted well with Albini’s shouting and Steiger’s crooked little grins. As Clint had intended, they both clearly heard what he was saying.

“Seems like you lads need to run around the parade ground a few times so you can really think about what you’ve just heard,” said Steiger, grinning at them, which was not at all what Clint wanted to hear. Was it really too much for one of these assholes to just announce themselves as Hydra, and casually let Clint know all the other Hydra agents on the base, so he could be done with this bullshit already?

“Go on, all four of you,” added Randolph. “Twenty laps.”

“Better make it quick,” added Steiger, “there’s an inspection of the barracks soon, you’ll want to be done by then.”

Just fucking great. Clint had been going to organise his kit bag so he’d be ready for that, but now he was going to spend his time running instead, and then get into trouble during the inspection.

“Yes, Sergeant,” he said, and followed the others outside to start running.

****

That afternoon they got taken off to a climbing tower, which cheered Clint up because rappelling straight down fifty feet was a lot more fun than cleaning the barracks or being shouted at on the parade ground.

“Did you do this one in the Boy Scouts?” Tanzer asked Barnes, nudging him hard with his elbow. 

“Maybe once or twice,” said Barnes.

“He’s not the only one,” added Clint, because he was kinda sick of just being seen as average at everything. “Bet I can get down faster than you, Boy Scout.”

Barnes snorted. “You realise you’re meant to rappel down, not just jump off?” he asked. “No one at the bottom to catch you here.”

“No sweat,” said Clint, as cockily as he could manage.

“You gonna lay a bet?” asked Everill. “Last one down takes the other’s watch?”

Tanzer snorted. “Last one down gets a punch in the face,” he said. “Let’s not pussy around.”

“Won’t you get in trouble if you start hitting each other?” asked Havelka which earned him a series of scoffs and a shove from Everill, who sadly seemed to be picking up on Tanzer’s habit of casual violence disguised as rough affection.

“I can’t go destroying Jameson’s pretty face,” said Clint, because as much as Barnes put his back up, he didn’t actually want to punch him. And he definitely didn’t want Captain America to find out he’d punched him. “Look at that, it’s a work of art.” He held his hands up to frame Barnes’s face like a painting, earning himself a couple of chuckles from the others and a dark glare from Barnes. “Maybe I’ll just get him to clean my boots instead.”

Barnes snorted. “Keep dreaming,” he said. “No way you’re making it down first.”

“I’m gonna make you eat your words,” Clint promised him.

There was space on the tower for five guys to go down at once, so Clint and Barnes got to go next to each other. Clint kept grinning at Barnes as they strapped in, keeping it as obnoxious as possible. 

“Keep looking at me like that, maybe I will fucking punch you once you’re at the bottom,” said Barnes. Clint just widened his grin and threw in a wink, and Barnes rolled his eyes, looking back at the instructor double-checking his ropes. “How much trouble would I be in if I just pushed him off?”

The instructor snorted. “Try and remember you’re meant to be learning teamwork and comradeship,” he said, moving over to check Clint’s harness.

“Right,” said Barnes with a snort. “Teamwork. Guess it’s past time someone taught this asshole how to do that.”

There was a bitter edge to his words that didn’t quite fit with the tone of friendly banter they were meant to be aiming for. Clint shot him a glare.

“I’ve worked in a team a lot longer than you have,” he pointed out, because he was fucked if he was going to let a lone assassin try and claim to be better at teamwork than he was. Clint had worked with the Avengers for a good few years, and got along well with all of them, even Tony fucking Stark, who spent the first six months pissing everyone off just to see if they’d let him push them away. 

And yeah, okay, maybe Clint had spent longer than that butting heads with Steve, but it wasn’t like Barnes had been around for that. By the time he’d arrived, Clint and Steve had been buddies. Clint had been the one Steve looked to when he needed a second opinion on tactics, or someone he trusted to get something done quickly and quietly, without too many questions.

Had been, because the moment Barnes had turned up, he had stepped right into that position as if Clint had never been there.

“All right, enough chitchat,” said the instructor, stepping back. “You’re all set, so any time you want to go-”

Clint didn’t let him finish his sentence. He threw himself backwards off the tower, letting the rope just run as he fell, bouncing his feet off the tower wall only a handful of times as a nod towards the idea that this wasn’t just a freefall. Barnes was a split-second behind him, apparently not having expected Clint to just go, and Clint pulled out all the stops to make sure he didn’t overtake, hitting the ground hard with both feet only a few seconds after leaving the top. It fucking hurt, but it was worth it to finally get to do something as well as he knew he could.

Barnes’s boots hit just after his and Clint couldn’t hold in his grin of satisfaction. He could hear some of the watching recruits cheering in the background, even as Albini prowled over to yell at them.

“This is a training exercise not a daredevil game! Getting injured in the first week of training would make you both fucking idiots!”

“Sorry, Staff Sergeant,” said Clint, starting to unclip his ropes. “We’ve both had experience though, we know what we’re doing. We did construction on tower blocks.”

“The only thing you know how to do is test my fucking patience, soldier!” snapped Albini, which was probably fair. Pretty much every other commanding officer Clint had ever had would have agreed that testing patience was definitely one of Clint’s best skills.

They both got more push-ups for the stunt, but it was totally worth it for the smug feeling of satisfaction at having beaten Barnes.

“Fucking cheated,” Barnes muttered as the unit were all marched back to barracks. “If we’da gone at the same time…”

“Don’t be a sore loser, Boy Scout,” said Clint, still happily grinning to himself. “And I want my boots spotless.”

****

The absolute worst thing about the mission, worse than the lack of sleep, than having to pretend to be mediocre at a bunch of things Clint could kill at given half a chance, than having to pretend to be a bigoted asshole while hanging out with other bigoted assholes, even worse than going through all this damn training for a job he didn’t want and was never going to have, the absolute worse thing about this mission, was that Clint was with Barnes pretty much 24/7.

They woke up in the same set of bunks, they ate meals at the same table, they marched up and down the yard side-by-side, they sat next to each other in the lectures. They did all of it together, pretending to be friends. It was like some kind of fucking torture.

It wasn’t even as if Barnes was shit to be around, not like Tanzer and his loud-voiced comments and ‘friendly’ arm punches that left your arm dead, or Everill and his quiet snigger whenever anyone was in pain. He was even pretty funny, on occasion, but every so often Clint would find himself laughing, glance over at him, and remember all over again that he was trying to steal Clint’s place on the team: his friends, his job, his home. Everything important.

The only time they weren’t right next to each other was when they were on watch at night. All the recruits had to take a turn at watching the barracks at night on two-hour shifts, which should have given Clint a couple of hours to sleep without Barnes’s obnoxiously loud breathing from the bunk above. Except, of course the asshole always seemed to wake him up when he got up for his watch. What kinda international assassin couldn’t sneak out of a barracks without waking everyone up?

And Clint could never seem to get back to sleep afterwards, no matter how shattered he was from training all day. He lay awake, listening to the sounds of a roomful of guys sleeping, and hated Barnes with every fibre in his body.

In the end he gave up and headed out to the bathroom, splashing water on his face and staring at his face in the mirror. He looked old and tired, which might just have been the shitty lighting, but Clint felt it as well. Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised that the team were edging him out if this was what they saw when they looked at him.

The door opened, and of course who else would come in but fucking Barnes.

“If you get caught pissing when you’re meant to be on watch, we’ll all get punished,” Clint reminded him.

Barnes rolled his eyes. “I got relieved, asshole,” he said. “What the fuck are you doing up?”

“My bunkmate decided to act like a herd of elephants when he went on watch,” said Clint, turning away from the mirror because he couldn’t stand staring at his own face any longer so he might as well stare at Barnes instead. At least he was pretty, even if he was a dick.

“The hell I did,” said Barnes. “Besides, that was two fucking hours ago. Did you really wait up just to bitch at me?”

Shit, had it really been two hours already? God, Clint was going to be so fucking tired tomorrow.

He didn’t answer the question. “Some kinda fucking stealthy assassin, waking everyone up just going on watch,” he said instead. “I’d ask if the Soviets were just that shit at covert ops but I know Nat, so I guess it’s just you who’s fucking shit at it.”

“Shut up,” muttered Barnes, glancing along the cubicles to make sure they were empty. “Now who’s going to give our fucking cover away?”

“It’s empty,” said Clint, rolling his eyes. “I’m not gonna compromise us just because I’m working with an asshole with no consideration for others.”

“Oh Jesus, calm the fuck down,” said Barnes. “Are you always this unprofessional? No wonder they palmed off partnering you on the one guy who couldn’t say no.”

And that was fucking _it_. First Barnes insulted Clint’s teamwork skills, and now he was saying he was unprofessional? Rage surged through Clint, white-hot, and for a moment he thought this was going to end in violence.

He took a deep breath, choking the urge to just reach out and hurt the guy, because he wasn’t that kind of man. He’d sworn he’d never be, no matter how fucking angry he got.

“I’m professional enough to not put your face through a fucking mirror for that,” he said, in a voice that wavered with just how much control it took not to start shouting and wake the whole barracks up. They had a mission, after all, and it was an important one.

“God, that’s a fucking low bar for professionalism,” said Barnes. “You know, I heard your usual mission partner was Natalia, and I figured that even if you were shitty on a team, you must be a good partner because there’s no way she puts up with any shit, but I beginning to think that can’t be true.”

Clint just gaped at him. “Fuck you,” he hissed, taking a step forward and clenching his hands into fists. “Fuck _you_ , Barnes, I am a _great_ mission partner, and an even better team player, and you can go fuck-”

Barnes didn’t let him finish. “Oh sure,” he scoffed. “Such a great team player. After every mission you wander off to collect your stupid fucking arrows while the rest of us deal with the cops and the press, and all the other annoying shit you’re too fucking self-important to help with.”

If Clint has wanted to punch the guy before, that was nothing on how much he wanted to now. “You utter fucking bastard,” he said. “How the fuck dare you say that to me? My goddamn job after a mission was always to contact SHIELD and give them a full rundown given that, you know, I’m an agent, I know what they need and what might be relevant to their operations and Coulson was my fucking handler for _years_ before he was our liaison. And then you came in and _stole my damn job_ -” 

Clint’s voice came out a lot rawer than he wanted on the last sentence so he cut himself off, then gave up on the conversation and pushed past Barnes to get out of the room. Fuck him. Where the fuck did he get off accusing Clint of slacking off when he was the one ripping away everything Clint had worked so hard to be trusted with?

Clint marched back to his bunk, shaking with rage and misery, wishing there was somewhere he could go to just scream for a bit. It took another five minutes for Barnes to come back and slip into his bunk without a word, but it took a good long while before Clint was able to fall asleep.

****

When wake-up call came the next morning, Clint was exhausted and still so angry that he could barely look at Barnes. They had breakfast and an inspection, then went on a run, and Clint kept his head down for it all. He was too tired for this, on a bone-deep level.

“Can we talk?” asked Barnes quietly as they ran through the woods, both keeping pace with the rest of the unit but not finding it nearly so hard-going.

“Nope,” said Clint. “Gotta focus.” _On the mission_ , he meant, but couldn’t say without everyone around them.

“No talking!” hollered Albini from somewhere behind them.

Clint let another half mile go by with no sounds but the pounding of boots on dirt, then added, “Seems best just to keep talk for _professional_ stuff, after all.”

Barnes made an irritated noise and glanced at him, but Clint kept his eyes on the track in front of them and didn’t meet his eyes.

Given how full their days were, it was pretty easy for Clint to dodge talking to Barnes for the rest of the day. He just focused on the training, talking and laughing with Tanzer and Everill as usual and making a couple of borderline offensive comments in the mess hall that hopefully a fair few people heard. The sooner they worked out who was Hydra, the sooner this mission was over and he could lock himself away in his room in the tower and properly sulk about this whole fucking mess.

He had first watch that night, heading out while everyone else went to bed. He was aching with tiredness by that point, but he’d had enough sleepless nights to know how to keep himself awake, dropping into a half-doze that still meant he was able to react when Sergeant Randolph tried to catch him out about halfway through his watch.

When he finally got to go to his bunk, the barracks was dark and quiet and Clint wasn’t sure he was awake enough to strip off his clothes before falling into bed.

Except, of course, Barnes was fucking awake. He sat up as Clint came up and Clint let out a sigh that he hoped summed his feelings up.

Barnes ignored it. “Can we talk?” he asked again, so quietly that Clint’s hearing aids barely picked it up. “We’ve gotta work together, we need to sort this out.”

Clint just gave him a shrug and gestured at his ears, then sat down on his bunk and started to take his boots off. He ignored every other sound from the bunk above until Barnes lay back down with an irritated sigh.

Perfect. Clint climbed into his own bunk and was asleep within seconds.

****

But then the next day was Sunday. Which wasn’t really much of a rest day, but they did get a couple of hours that weren’t already timetabled, while some of the others went off to various religious services. Clint had been planning to use some of it to catch up on his sleep, but he also had to sort out the mess some of his equipment was in.

Which gave Barnes the perfect chance to corner him.

“We need to talk.”

“So talk,” said Clint, because there were at least six other guys within earshot so Barnes wouldn’t be able to mention anything that might blow their cover.

Barnes just glared at him, then let out a sigh and stared up at the ceiling as if looking for patience. Clint wished him luck finding it, because he intended to test every last part of it. Time to really get some use out of his special skill at that.

“I feel like you’re just proving my point with this shit,” said Barnes, tiredly. Clint rolled his eyes and focused harder on cleaning his boots. “Look, I need to explain something, that’s all. Two minutes of your time.”

They were beginning to attract attention now, and Clint was achingly aware that they were meant to be friends. If they had a public conversation that made it seem they weren’t talking, it would be all around the platoon by lunchtime.

“Jesus, fine,” he said, sitting down his boot. “But if it’s just about how your sister is off-limits, man, I told you, I can’t help how the ladies go wild for all of this.” He gestured vaguely at himself as he stood up.

Barnes rolled his eyes and led the way out of the barracks. Clint was tempted to disappear on him before they got outside, but he had a feeling the stubborn bastard was going to just keep nagging at it until Clint gave in.

Outside, they found a quiet spot down the side of the barracks where they could check no one was listening, and then Clint gave him an unimpressed glare.

“No idea what you think we’ve got to talk about,” he said. “We just need to focus on getting this done.”

“Yeah, because it’s so easy to focus when you so obviously hate me,” said Barnes. “Look, I get that we’re not gonna be bosom buddies, but I wasn’t kidding when I said I need this to go well. Half of SHIELD still don’t trust me, the other half don’t think I’m any good at their kind of thing; it was made very clear that this was a test. If I fuck up, even if it’s because you’re a dick, they won’t give me any other missions. I’ll get cut out.”

“So?” asked Clint. “You’ll still have the Avengers. It’s not like Steve’s gonna kick his best bud out.”

Barnes shook his head. “Not the point. Avengers stuff is mostly firefights, I want to be part of this bit as well, intelligence gathering and taking these assholes down from the inside. I need SHIELD on my side for that.” He hesitated and then added, “And I told Steve that, which is why he set me to liaise with them, so I’d get to know Coulson and those kinds of people, and hopefully make a good impression. I had no idea that you were doing it before.”

Clint tightened his jaw. “Steve didn’t say anything about that,” he said. They’d just got to the end of a mission one day and while Clint had been pulling his phone out to contact Coulson, Steve had said, “Bucky’s gonna talk to SHIELD, Clint. How about you help Natasha out?’

Except Natasha knew him entirely too well to let him anywhere near a cop at a time when they needed to play nice with them, so he’d just ended up drifting about aimlessly, before starting to collect up his arrows.

“Yeah, I figured,” said Barnes. He let out a sigh and rubbed a hand over his face. “Look, if you want to take back SHIELD liaison once we’re back, then fine, but please. Don’t fuck this up for me. I spent decades being nothing but a blunt weapon. I want to be more than that.”

Aw, fuck. Because Clint knew exactly how that felt, although maybe not the ‘decades’ part, and he understood the faint note of desperation in Barnes’s voice all too well.

He took a moment just to look at him, making himself see more than just the asshole who was taking Clint’s place. Barnes looked tired, sure, but resolute as well, and Clint knew there was no one who wanted to take down Hydra more than he did.

He let out a sigh. “We’ll talk about it when we get back,” he said. “Let’s just get this fucking mission done first. I don’t want to drag it out any longer than we have to, I’m sick of the fucking food here.”

Barnes relaxed, sending him a flash of a smile. “If you think it’s bad now, shoulda tried it during the forties, pal.”

“Oh sure, sure,” Clint said, turning to head back to the barracks. “I know how it goes with you old guys. Everything was worse back in the day.”

“The music was better,” said Barnes. “That shit we were listening to in the car down here…”

“Those were all classics,” said Clint firmly as they went inside, flashing a smile at a couple of guys as they passed. “Besides, are you telling me that you’re not starting to feel as swift as the coursing river? Army’s gonna make a man out of you, Jameson.”

“If you’re not careful I’ll show you the force of a great typhoon,” muttered Barnes, but there was a light edge to the threat that Clint didn’t think was just for the pretence of being friends.

They settled back down on their bunks and managed their first friendly conversation that didn’t feel forced for the mission.

Well, Clint had agreed to a truce. He guessed he hadn’t been doing a very good job of that, but the least he could do was give Barnes a proper chance at showing his undercover skills. The truce was only until the end of the mission, after all.

****

The second week of basic training was when they started being taught hand-to-hand combat, which was a relief, frankly. Clint was very ready to hit something.

Their mission was still not really getting anywhere and, okay, Clint had understood going in that it would be a long one. Hydra weren’t about to reveal themselves until they’d had plenty of time to vet the new recruits and work out who they could twist around to their ideology. 

Which meant they had another seven or eight weeks of this shit.

Clint got partnered with Pascal for their first hand-to-hand lesson. Pascal might have been skinny, but he was fast, if he could just work out how to use that. Clint did his best to hold back but muscle memory was a tricky thing, and he’d spent years training his body to react instinctively in a fight. He put Pascal on his back twice before he gave up on pretending not to be really fucking good at this, and started trying to coach him instead.

“If you’re gonna come for me, it’s gotta be a surprise,” he said. “Use some of that speed to confuse me.”

Pascal’s eyes narrowed and he managed a feint that would have confused most guys, followed up by a solid punch that Clint let happen.

As they squared up again, he could see Sergeant Randolph making his way over, pausing to watch the other pairs for a moment. Barnes had been teamed up with Havelka, which meant he was having an even tougher time than Clint to avoid just wiping the floor with him. He was also having to avoid using his left arm, or letting anyone touch it, while not making it obvious that was what he was doing.

Randolph watched Barnes and Havelka for a moment, then wandered a bit closer, so that he was almost certainly within earshot, which meant it was time for Clint to be an asshole again.

“Come on,” said Clint, grinning at Pascal in a way that he knew most people found infuriating. “Lay one on me, show me you’re a man, not a pathetic little girl.”

This time, Pascal’s eyes narrowing was the only signal Clint had before he got walloped. He grabbed his arm and twisted just _so_ , rolling Pascal onto the ground, and, shit, he hadn’t really meant to do that.

Ah, fuck it. If Randolph was looking for Hydra recruits, he’d probably want them to be good at fighting as well as bigoted bullies.

“You done much fighting before, Clifton?” Randolph asked as Pascal pulled himself up, glaring at Clint.

“Ah, some,” said Clint, because if he claimed to be a novice now, no one was going to buy it. He ran through his cover story for a place he could throw some in and added, “My dad taught me to box, and then I guess I just picked it up from there.”

Randolph just nodded, then gestured at Pascal to go for it again. This time Clint didn’t let him land a punch, ducking Pascal’s shot before landing one of his own. Pascal muttered a swear word and glared at Clint again, who just grinned back.

“Might be better to mix things up a bit,” said Randolph. “Pascal, swap out with Jameson. Let me show you and Havelka a couple of things.”

That’s what Clint would have done if he’d been teaching this class as well. Leave the two experienced guys to slug it out while taking some extra time with the newbies. 

Of course, knowing that didn’t make it any less irritating to have to face up to Barnes, the one guy Clint would really, really like to wipe the floor with, and know that he could only use a fraction of his skills. 

But then Barnes was hobbled in the same way, and Clint was fully aware that his left arm currently counted as a weak spot. Even if he wasn’t worried about Clint touching it and feeling metal through the sleeve like he had been with Havelka, he still needed to hide just how strong and durable it was from anyone who might be watching.

“I haven’t seen you spar much,” said Barnes, quietly enough not to be heard.

Maybe Clint had been avoiding running into him in the Avengers gym, but it was bad enough that he had to share a range with the guy without having to see him every time he wanted to work out as well.

“Guess this is going to be full of surprises for you then,” he said, squaring up to him with a grin. “Just don’t be too much of a _boy scout_ about it, yeah?

Barnes gave a sharp nod that meant he’d caught the warning to try and stick to their covers, then he prepared himself for the match.

What followed was a very strange sparring match. They were both trying to keep to simple moves, nothing too strong or fast, but they were both equally determined to win. Clint had to keep holding himself back from sweeping in and properly going for it, and he could tell from the way Barnes kept shifting forward and then forcing himself back instead that he was in the same situation.

It wasn’t Clint’s first match trying to lull his audience into underestimating him, though, which meant he had the upper hand of experience. Back when he’d first joined SHIELD, he’d held back in all his sparring matches because he hadn’t wanted them to know too much about him. Even after he’d let himself grow comfortable enough to show off his true skills, he’d been on enough missions where he needed to be just another thug to know how to make it look like he’d got in a lucky shot when he’d really set himself up for it, or to make it seem like chance when his flailing kick caught Barnes right in the solar plexus.

Barnes hesitated a split-second before going over like a sack of bricks, clearly realising that Bryan Jameson needed to be seen to be taken down by the blow, even if Bucky Barnes would have just shrugged it off.

“Hey, you okay man?” asked Clint, walking over and giving him a self-satisfied grin. He offered his hand to help him up.

Barnes narrowed his eyes at him. “Lucky hit,” he said, taking Clint’s hand and standing up. “I’ll get you next time.”

“Sure thing,” said Clint happily, because this whole lesson was now stretching out in front of him as a chance to finally kick Barnes’s ass without any repercussions like a mad Captain America. “Good luck with that.”

Barnes glared at him and got back into position to spar. “Come on,” he said, and Clint gladly did.

Things didn’t go entirely Clint’s way but he’d always enjoyed a good competition, and it seemed like Barnes did as well, if the way he was grinning by the end was anything to go by.

“Alright, that’s enough of that!” announced Albini at the end of the lesson, and Clint wasn’t close to wanting to finish. From the look in Barnes’s eyes, he didn’t either. “You’ve got half an hour for lunch and then we are taking you off into the great outdoors to discover what a map is! Hopefully we’ll lose some of you sorry fuckers along the way!”

“Let’s see if we can get paired again next time,” said Barnes as they headed towards the mess hall while Clint was thinking mournfully of the power showers that Tony had installed next to the gym back at the tower and wondering when they’d be allowed time for a shower. 

Clint sent him a raised eyebrow and Barnes shrugged a shoulder.

“Easier to maintain our cover if we’re fighting each other.”

Clint snorted. “Sure,” he agreed. “Definitely better than having to go gentle with these newbies.”

****

Things maybe got a bit competitive after that. It spread from the combat lessons to the timed runs and the assault course they were finally introduced to, and which Clint fucking aced. They got given their rifles to familiarise themselves with and Barnes proved himself better at disassembling and reassembling it faster than Clint but not so fast that it stood out as particularly impressive for a guy who hadn’t handled a gun before. Clint paid him back by completing the compass course faster, orienteering his way back to base less than a minute after the first guy back and giving Barnes a smug grin when he arrived five minutes later.

All in all, it was actually more fun than Clint had been expecting, but then he’d always thrived on competition. Even now he wasn’t sure he’d have taken to archery so quickly if he hadn’t been trying to prove himself better than Barney.

What it wasn’t, was any damn help at all with the mission. So far there had been no signs at all that anything here was anything other than on the up-and-up. If it had been anyone other than Hill and Coulson who’d given it to them, he might have started to wonder if the intel had been wrong.

Their platoon started to get smaller as some of the men decided they didn’t want to join the Army badly enough for all this, disappearing in ones and twos to go home instead. Clint found himself quietly marking out who he thought would be next to go and then, when he noticed Barnes eyeing some of the same guys he was, sharing his thoughts with him.

“Nielsen,” he said one night as they got ready for lights out. Nielsen had got lost on the compass course and then decided to blame it on the instructions they’d been given, which had ended with a blistering row with Sergeant Steiger and a hundred push ups. He looked exhausted and still pissed about the whole thing.

Barnes tipped his head in acknowledgement. “Havelka,” he countered.

Havelka was still doing very badly with unarmed combat. Not only was his coordination clumsy, but he never really seemed like he wanted to hit anyone. Even when he did get a punch in, he flinched back and half the time apologised, almost instinctively.

He was still shining with optimism though, enthusiastic about almost everything they did. Clint couldn’t see him giving up yet, not until he’d been ground down a bit further.

“Wanna make a bet?” asked Clint.

Barnes rolled his eyes as he pulled himself up into his bunk, biceps flexing. “Nope. I’m not cleaning your rank boots again.”

“Guess I’ll just have to settle for the smug feeling of superiority when I get proved right,” said Clint, settling into his own bunk.

Barnes just snorted, and a moment later the lights clicked out and the barracks descended into silence.

The next morning, Nielsen packed up his gear after breakfast and went home, and Havelka came bounding out to the parade ground with the rest of them. Clint beamed at Barnes and earned himself a roll of his eyes. God, he really did love pissing the guy off.


	3. Chapter 3

They all got handed pugil sticks and padding at the start of week three, and really, that definitely should have made Havelka go home, especially when he got paired with Tanzer, who seemed to assume that being handed a stick meant he should be beating someone to death.

Clint got paired with Everill, who kept trying to use it like a baseball bat. Clint had to duck a couple of times to avoid having his head taken off, even with the helmets they’d been issued.

After the first session, they all went back to the barracks battered and bruised, despite the padding on the sticks.

“Fuck, I hope we get better at that,” said Pascal, poking at a purpling mark coming up on his shin.

“Yeah, you better,” said Tanzer, “or they’re gonna send your ass home.”

Pascal rolled his eyes at him. “What happened to being supportive to our teammates?”

Tanzer snorted. “You ain’t gonna be a teammate if you go home now. I’ll be supportive once I know who’s going to make the cut.”

“Right,” agreed Barnes. “No point in supporting the weak to make it through when culling them means we end up with a stronger unit.”

“I’m not weak,” said Pascal, which brought a succession of rolling eyes that Clint took care to join in with, even though Pascal was right. He wasn’t the weakest guy in the unit, and even if he were, they should have been helping him get stronger, not just shitting on him until he left.

That wasn’t how a Hydra recruit would think, though.

“And I’m not the one ducking out of the consequences of training,” added Pascal, gesturing across the room.

Huerta and Ziskind had been given a set of bunks in the corner to share, and a reminder that there was to be no sex. They’d mostly kept to themselves, clearly struggling with the demands of basic training on top of the life-changing discovery of their soulmate. Right now, though, Ziskind had his shirt off and Huerta had his hands gently rubbing over a scrap on his shoulder where he must have landed hard on the ground. The faint golden glow of soulmate healing was coming from where they touched. 

“Fuck off,” said Ziskind. “Just cuz y’all are jealous we ain’t gonna wake up aching tomorrow.”

“You better fucking not,” said Tanzer. “No fucking fag bullshit in the barracks, or you’ll have a lot more injuries to heal.”

Huerta pulled away from Ziskind, leaving only healthy skin behind, the injury completely healed. “Can’t imagine anything worse than having any kind of sex around you, Tanzer,” he said. “I think I’d need at least a mile between us to even be able to get up.”

Sergeant Steiger came in at that point, clapping his hands and telling them they had two minutes to be outside on parade, and they all started rushing to get ready. 

The rest of the week included a lot of the same old bullshit, as well as person-carrying methods, which was fine until they all had to try and lift Barnes and his fucking heavy metal arm.

“Jesus, what the fuck have you been eating?” gritted out Huerta.

“A whole lot of sergeants’ boot leather,” said Clint, which earned him a handful of snickers and a glare from Barnes. He wasn’t wrong though, even with his added efforts to not be perfect every minute of the day, Barnes was still the guy in the unit who spent the least time getting yelled at.

And then came the afternoon when they got marched over to another part of the base, while Sergeant Steiger radiated pure, malicious joy.

“All right men!” he announced once they’d drawn to a halt and were at attention outside of a long low building. “This here is the gas chamber! We are going to test out your ability to put on a gas mask without fucking up!”

“Oh god,” muttered the guy in front of Clint and immediately got rounded on by Steiger.

“There’s no need for you to look like a little girl who misses her mommy, it’s just a little CS gas! And if you put your mask on properly, it won’t matter what it is!”

Right. Except Clint knew enough about how these things worked to guess that at some point they were going to be ordered to take their masks off, to give them a little taste.

Well, this would probably weed out a couple more guys who weren’t going to make it to the end of training. He glanced over at Havelka, who looked just as eager as he always did.

They were taken inside the building and instructed on how to put their masks on. Clint decided this was one test where he wasn’t going to try and act like a rookie, and put it on perfectly, making sure the seal was tight. 

They got taken into the chamber in groups, which meant having to wait around outside, getting sweaty inside the masks. Clint saw Everill adjusting his to try and get some cooler air inside, and decided not to mention that he hadn’t put it back properly. It felt like the guy could do with a dose of CS gas to the face.

In fact, it was a shame that Tanzer’s mask was on properly.

Barnes, of course, had his mask on perfectly and looked completely calm and composed. Presumably these masks were a lot more comfortable than whatever he’d been given during the War. They didn’t look as stylish as the black mask and goggles that Hydra had put him in, but Clint thought he probably wouldn’t mention that, in the spirit of not being a complete dick.

Their group got ushered into the chamber and the door clanged shut behind them, which was the kind of noise that always made Clint flinch with anticipation. He’d been on the wrong side of too many doors like that.

The gas was fed in while Steiger put them through some basic drills, making them stand to attention, then wheel right, then left. Clint could tell the exact moment that enough gas got passed Everill’s seal, because he made a strange whining noise and stopped dead in place, hands raised to his mask.

“Do not take that mask off, soldier!” snapped Steiger, but it looked like Everill was trying to press it against his face harder. 

Too damn late if his eyes were already burning.

Steiger strode over and grabbed his head, looking through the window of his mask for a long moment, then let out a sigh loud enough to be heard through his mask. “There’s always one,” he said. “You were given clear instructions, maybe you’ll be able to follow them the second time. Go on, get out. Mask off, wash both it and your face off, then wait back out with the guys who haven’t gone yet and we’ll try it again.”

Everill didn’t wait a second longer, he darted out of the exit as Steiger turned back to the rest of them. “I hope you all realise how important double-checking your mask is now!” he said, and there were some nods from around the room.

“I don’t think Everill should suffer alone though, should he?” said Steiger, and picked the guy on the left of the line. “You there, take your mask off.”

The guy didn’t react, probably too busy staring at him in horror.

“Come on, come on, that was an order!” demanded Steiger and finally, unhappily, the guy fumbled his mask off.

Immediately his eyes went red and welled up and he curled over, letting out a cry.

“Don’t touch your face,” said Steiger. “Just give me the Army’s seven values, quick as you can, and you can go out into the fresh air.”

It took the poor guy longer than it should have to stutter out the list of values, but Steiger dismissed him as soon as he managed it, then turned to the next guy. “Your turn!” he said.

Clint let out a sigh. Yeah, just as he expected. He glanced over at Barnes, but couldn’t read anything on his face through his mask. Not that he really expected to see anything anyway; the guy had a poker face like no one else he’d ever met, even Natasha.

Although, it had taken Clint five years to catch the trick of seeing Natasha’s micro-expressions. Maybe in five years Barnes would be an open book to him.

God, five years of knowing the guy seemed like a lot. Clint would probably be off the Avengers by then anyway.

Steiger moved down the row, making each guy take off his mask and then repeat back some part of the army dogma they’d been drilled in so far. Some of the guys managed it okay, but some needed a couple of goes, while tears streamed down their face and they tried not to whimper at the burning pain. It took Havelka three goes to remember the correct wording of the first Army general order, by which time he was making distressed little noises in between words.

Clint got given the Pledge of Allegiance, which was easy enough to rattle off, especially when he was used to having to come up with far more obscure things under worse pain or, more often, say nothing at all. He shut his eyes even before he took his mask off and when Steiger let him go he opened only one of them enough to duck out into the room next door. His eyes were his livelihood, after all, he wasn’t about to risk them. 

The recovery room was full of soldiers trying to pretend they were being manly and stoic despite the burning pain and tears running down their faces, all of them splashing water on their faces in a variety of ineffectual ways. Clint found himself a sink and immediately started washing his eyes out properly, from the inner to the outer corner, making sure to keep the water off his clothes.

Barnes came out a couple of minutes later, and he didn’t look even half as bad as the rest of them did. Shit, did his supersoldier thing mean he didn’t get affected by tear gas in the same way as a normal guy? That was horribly unfair.

And going to stand out like a glaring neon sign in a room full of weeping men. 

Clint moved quickly, turning the faucet he was using up to full and using it to fill his gas mask like a bucket.

“Hey, Jameson, think fast!” he called, then flung the whole lot of water right at Barnes, catching him right in the face.

“Jesus FUCK!” swore Barnes, flinching back. “You asshole!” 

And yeah, maybe the mask would have contaminated the water with some chemicals that meant his skin was now burning, but that was only going to help cover Barnes’s supersoldier abilities, right?

Tanzer let out a deep cackle and immediately threw a handful of water at the guy next to him, who happened to be Pascal.

“Fucking asshole!” swore Pascal, just as some other guy threw another handful of water at the guy next to him, and in no time at all, the place had descended into an incredibly ill-advised water fight.

Barnes stomped over to Clint. “What the fuck?!” he hissed.

Clint didn’t get a chance to answer.

Steiger came storming in from the gas chamber with the last weeping, red-eyed soldier stumbling after him. “What the _hell_ is going on here?” he demanded.

Everyone froze in place, but no one said a word.

“Stand to attention!” snapped Steiger. “Try to remember that you are United States soldiers and not elementary school brats! Now, who started this?”

There was a long pause and Clint braced himself to own up to it, wondering if he couldn’t have come up with a better plan to cover Barnes’s lack of a reaction.

He didn’t get a chance to speak though, because Pascal did instead.

“Sergeant, it was Clifton! He threw water at Jameson first, and then Tanzer turned it into a free-for-all.”

There was a deep, echoing sense of shock in the room, even without anyone moving or saying anything. You didn’t drop your fellow soldiers in it like that, no matter what. You waited for them to own up to it, or you treated them like shit until they did, but you didn’t go tattling on them.

“Clifton,” said Steiger, looking at Clint. “I’m surprised at you. I thought you knew this wasn’t a summer camp for delinquent teens.”

Clint gave a helpless shrug. “Sorry Sergeant,” he said. “Just, I saw Jameson’s face and couldn’t resist.”

Beside him, Barnes shifted his weight.

Steiger let out a sigh. “All of you get cleaned up. There are showers next door, do not, and believe when I say you will regret this, do not turn the heat up on them. You want that water to be as cold as my wife’s heart, you hear me? And you, Clifton, and Tanzer as well, I’ll deal with you back at the barracks.”

Clint let out a sigh. Great, more punishment. Just what he wanted.

He turned to Barnes to find him glaring at him. 

“Oh, wait, I-” started Clint, but Barnes didn’t let him explain, he just turned on his heel and headed into the showers.

God, Barnes was such an asshole.

****

Clint and Tanzer got yelled at for a while by both Steiger and Albini, and then the whole unit was given a lot of push ups to do, which meant they were all late for dinner and had to gulp it down double-quick. Most of the unit accepted it as just one of those things that happened in basic training, but Clint caught Pascal glaring at him and Tanzer as they jogged back to the barracks.

Jesus, that guy did not have the attitude to be part of a team.

Or maybe he was just sick of being on a team with obvious neo-fascists. That didn’t excuse him from telling on them, of course, but Clint could imagine he’d be pretty pissed after a few weeks listening to a gang of assholes spouting off bullshit.

Back at the barracks, Clint had another go at trying to talk to Barnes, then gave up when he got stonewalled. It wasn’t like he cared that much about explaining himself.

They were given a quiet evening, presumably to give them some time to recover from the CS gas, but then they were woken up at 2 AM to go for a night hike that ended at the assault course at dawn. By the time they’d all made it through that, Clint was too tired and irritated by the whole thing to give a damn what Barnes thought of him.

Things were cool between them for the next few days. Clint just focused on getting through the training, hoping like hell that Hydra would show themselves sooner rather than later. There had to be some kind of test or something, right? Some way for them to take the guys they wanted to recruit to one side and make sure they were Hydra material, and probably start on the indoctrination side of things.

The unit passed into the second phase of training, which came with actual weapons that they were allowed to fire, and not just take apart and clean. The training started being geared more towards combat and not just general fitness skills. Clint kept doing his best to put himself in the top group of the unit without actually coming out on top, but it was hard for him to face a set of targets and not hit them all. Every time he deliberately missed one by a fraction of an inch, he felt himself flinching, expecting the old punishment of Trickshot’s stick coming down on his shoulders.

The fourth week passed quickly and before Clint knew it, they were into week five and over halfway through actually graduating into the Army.

Shit, what if Hydra waited to approach them until after they were assigned to a regular Army unit? How long would Clint have to keep playing at Frank Clifton, professional asshole?

He cornered Barnes one day and asked him if he thought Hydra would make them wait that long.

“No,” said Barnes, shaking his head. He was always strictly professional when they discussed the mission, and friendly to Clint when others were watching. It was the rest of the time that he just blanked him, which pretty much made Clint want to keep needling him until he broke. He was resisting at the moment, because he really didn’t want to be the reason this mission failed.

Plus, he kinda missed the little atmosphere of competitiveness that they’d been nurturing between them. Barnes’s shit-talk had been almost funny, on occasion.

“Hydra doesn’t have the patience for that,” added Barnes. “If they’re recruiting guys from this camp, they’ll approach them here rather than waste resources keeping track of them after.”

Clint let out a sigh. “Is there anything else we could do to push them?” he asked. “I just...I’m getting pretty sick of this.”

Barnes gave him a cold stare. “A mission takes as long as it takes,” he said, and walked away. Clint really, really wanted to throw something at the back of his head, but he resisted.

Well, and he didn’t have anything on him just then that he could get away with throwing.

****

The next day at breakfast, Clint sat opposite Barnes and glared at him until Barnes lifted his head from concentrating on his food. “What?” he asked, wearily.

Clint, who had been up since 2.30 AM because he’d been on watch, thought he had some nerve acting tired. “I think we need to step our game up,” he said, because he’d spent his whole watch thinking about it. “At the moment we’re no more obviously suited for them to pick than Tanzer or Everill.”

Barnes let out a sigh and rubbed his hand over his face. His left hand, Clint noticed, and wondered if it felt different in the camouflage sleeve. “Okay, fine,” he said. “What do you suggest?”

Clint shrugged. “You’re the expert on them,” he said. “You know how they think, what kinda stuff they value.”

Barnes sent him a dark look. “It’s not like I was really party to their ideologies,” he pointed out. “I was just a blunt tool.”

“Well, you’re still pretty much a tool,” said Clint, “but you were a tool with ears, right? Come on, there must be something.”

That earned him another glare that Clint just ignored, because he just called it like he saw it. If Barnes hadn’t been a tool, he might have let Clint explain about the water fight. Or even just been a decent guy to work on the same team as to start with.

“Okay, alright,” said Barnes quietly. “They like the strong taking what they want from the weak, right? Assholes oppressing the little guy to get what they want at his expense. If you’re not one of them, you’re the enemy, or you’re dust beneath their boots.”

“Okay,” said Clint, slowly. “Which in this situation means…?”

Barnes shrugged. “We pick a guy who is letting the unit down, and we get him to leave. Bully him out of the camp and then say it was the natural order of things.”

Clint considered that. “Bully someone,” he repeated, not really liking the idea, which meant it probably was Hydra behaviour.

“Yeah,” said Barnes, then sent him a knife-sharp grin. “You’ll be good at that anyway. You’ve got experience bullying the new guy on your team.”

Clint just gaped at him for a moment, shocked by the implication, because if anything, it had been the other way around. Barnes had been the one who turned up and just casually took over everything that had been Clint’s and, yeah, he’d explained the SHIELD liaison thing, but there was still the way Clint had become pretty much superfluous as a sniper. Not to mention his friendships with Steve and Natasha.

“You’re a dick,” hissed Clint, and just stood up and walked away, too angry to stay where he was because he’d end up saying way too much and completely throwing the mission.

****

He couldn’t stop thinking about it though. He hadn’t been acting like a bully, right? He’d just been getting his own back for all the shit Barnes had done to him.

All the shit like taking his place as liaison, which he’d already explained had been Steve’s idea.

Fuck.

There had been more to it, of course, but the more time Clint spent thinking about it while going through the routines of the day, the more he realised that maybe he’d over-reacted, and that most of the shitty stuff Barnes had said to him had been in direct response to Clint being a dick first.

He probably wasn’t actively trying to take Clint’s place, after all. They just had similar ways in which to be useful to the team, that was all.

Of course, Barnes hadn’t had to be such an asshole about it, he could have tried maybe talking to Clint first.

Just like Clint could have tried talking to him, and maybe Steve as well.

God damnit, he was going to have to apologise. He fucking hated apologising.

He waited until that evening, about twenty minutes past lights out when everyone else was either happily snoring, or outside on watch. He got up as soundlessly as he could, intending to wake Barnes up, only to find he was still awake, glaring at Clint with a frown. Clint gestured in the direction of the bathrooms, and just got an eye-roll in response, followed by a pointed pull up of the blankets around Barnes’s chin.

Clint glared at him and yanked at the blankets, and then remembered that he was meant to be being nice to him.

Too late. Brnes sat up with a furious look and jabbed a middle finger up at Clint. Clint just gestured more furiously at the bathroom. Barnes let out an audible sigh, then grumpily began to climb down from the bunk.

Good start, Clint, this was going really well.

When they got to the bathroom, Barnes leaned back against the wall with his arms crossed and gave Clint a dark look. “This better be worth losing sleep over.”

He’d been sleeping shirtless and the move really highlighted the sheer power of his shoulders and the bulge of muscle down both arms. Clint found himself missing the sight of his metal one, hidden away under the camouflage sleeve, and had to jerk his eyes up to look at Barnes’s face.

“You need less sleep than any other fucker in there, don’t give me that.” Which, again, was not the best start to an apology. He took a deep breath and rubbed a hand over his face. “Okay, so, look. About what you said earlier.”

Barnes straightened up. “You want to try it?” he said, in his ‘the mission is more important than my emotions’ voice. “Bullying someone out?”

Clint hadn’t given it a second thought, but he nodded. “Yeah, I think we need to do everything we can to signal that we’re the guys they need to pick, but that wasn’t why I wanted to talk.” He took a deep breath, then just forced himself to get it out. “I wanted to say sorry.”

Barnes blinked at him very slowly. “For the water fight?”

“What?” asked Clint. “Nope, definitely not, that was for your own good. You came out of a chamber of CS gas looking like you coulda spent all day in there, someone needed to distract the others before they noticed you weren’t crying like a bitch like the rest of us.”

Barnes looked completely blindsided, like he hadn’t even considered that. 

Clint huffed out a sigh. “Okay, look, I get I’ve been kind of a dick, but I’m not that bad. You really thought I was just randomly throwing CS-contaminated water at you because...what? I hate you?”

“It wouldn’t be completely out of character,” said Barnes. “I mean, you made it pretty clear from the start that you hate me which, okay fine, I spent seventy years killing the good guys. I’ve still got large gaps in what I remember, for all I know we went up against each other at some point, like I did with Natasha. I wasn’t expecting everyone on the team to welcome me with open arms, but I wasn’t really expecting the sheer level of petty bullshit you’d bring to hating me.”

“Oh Jesus,” said Clint, tiredly. “It’s got nothing to do with your past, dude. Seriously, I really would be a complete asshole to hate you for that.” He hesitated and then added, “Not when I know what it’s like to have your mind taken over.”

Barnes’s head jerked up at that, but Clint wasn’t interested in going into any details, just like he wasn’t interested in talking about the one time he had gone up against the Winter Soldier, and had his ass soundly kicked.

He ploughed on with the original point of this instead. “No, listen. I’ve been being a dick to you because you’re replacing me, and it pisses me off. I mean, I guess having a supersoldier sniper with a badass metal arm is better than having a frail human guy with a bow, but it still sucks, you know?”

“I’m not replacing you,” said Barnes, frowning at him. “Are you kidding? You’re one of the original team, there’s no way you’d be replaced.”

Clint snorted. “Yeah, sure. Except that’s exactly what’s happening.” He waved that away because he wasn’t interested in delving into it too far, mostly because he didn’t want to cry in front of the guy. “Look, it’s not relevant anyway, because it’s not like you’re the one making that call. I should have just tried to talk to you rather than getting all petty with not including you on coffee runs and bending your rifle sights at the range by a couple of degrees and all that.”

Barnes ran his hand over his head as if expecting to find long hair to push back instead of a month’s growth of dark stubble. “Of course that was you,” he said. “I spent hours trying to work out what happened to my aim.”

Clint just gave him a vague shrug. “Sorry, man.”

Barnes gave him a long, careful look, then sighed. “Do you know what Steve said to me, just before I left on this mission?”

“Not a clue,” said Clint. “Something heartfelt about your eternal brotherly bond?”

Barnes ignored him, which was probably for the best. It seemed Clint had got too into the habit of needling him to stop cold turkey.

“He said he was glad I was going on my first SHIELD mission with you because you weren’t just a great agent, but a great teammate. He said I could follow your lead here because you knew exactly what you’re doing. He said to listen to anything you said about strategy or tactics, and to trust your instincts because they were very rarely wrong.”

Clint just stared at him. “Bullshit,” he breathed, because there was no way in hell Steve had said any of that.

“Nope,” said Barnes. “I swear to god, he said all that. And he was right, because I should have trusted that you’d started that water fight for a reason. So, I guess I’m going to trust that we need to do more to make Hydra want to recruit us as well.”

Clint took a deep breath, pushing his hand over his own shorn hair as he carefully repressed everything Barnes had just said until he could think about it alone. “Okay,” he said, forcing himself to focus on the mission. “Okay, yeah. So we bully some poor sucker out of the unit, right? Who do we pick? Pascal, because he clearly hates us, and he did drop me in it to Steiger?”

“Nah,” said Barnes, “it’s not about getting rid of someone we don't like. It’s about getting rid of the weakest so that the unit is stronger.”

Clint made a face, because there was only one guy that described. “Havelka.”

Barnes nodded. “Yep.”

Fuck. Clint really didn’t want to be a dick to Havelka, not when he was clearly trying so hard even as he came up last time and time again. It made sense though, because he really wasn’t keeping up with the rest of them, no matter how much he started each day with a positive attitude.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, Havelka.”

And after the mission, Clint would find some way to make it up to him. Find him a better job than the Army would have been, maybe get Tony to work his computer magic so he got a windfall of some kind, something to make up for the fact that he and Barnes were about to wreck his Army career before it even started.

He started to head back out of the bathroom, and Barnes caught his arm. “Hey,” he said, “thanks. For apologising. I appreciate it.”

Clint flashed him a grin. “Here’s to a new start,” he said. “Unless, you know, you beat my obstacle course time tomorrow, in which case all bets are off.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you’ve got a fragile ego?” said Barnes. 

“Fuck off, asshole,” said Clint, feeling more cheerful than he had since this mission had started. Hell, since before that. Steve trusted his judgement, and had told his BFF that he could too. That had to mean he wasn’t going to push Clint out, right?

****

Barnes didn’t beat Clint’s obstacle course time. He got exactly the same time, down to the second, then gave Clint a pointed smirk that was, in many ways, a thousand times more irritating than if he had beaten it.

Clint gritted his teeth and told himself that he’d beat him on the next thing. The next thing turned out to be anti-tank weaponry, which seemed a little unfair given that, despite all the many and varied missions Clint had been on, he’d never actually gone up against tanks. Alien spaceships? Sure. Evil robots from the future? Definitely. Giant mutant chinchillas? Yup, and also they were never speaking of that again. But tanks? Nope. They were too mainstream for most of the guys the Avengers fought.

Barnes, of course, had plenty of experience with tanks, which was the only reason he did better than Clint with the anti-tank stuff. Well, that and that he still wasn’t doing a particularly good job of not being perfect at everything. Clint had a feeling that he needed to have another little chat with him about the importance of fucking up.

Havelka, on the other hand, was terrible at it, just like he had been on the obstacle course.

“You gotta wonder how long a guy can keep being trash at everything he puts his hand to without just fucking off back home,” said Clint, loudly enough to be heard by both Havelka, who flushed red and ducked his head, and Albini, who acted as if he hadn’t heard anything.

“Maybe he just needs a little encouragement,” said Barnes.

Bullying a guy out of basic training was one of the shittiest things Clint had ever done. It made him feel like a complete shit every time he and Barnes made sure that their hurtful little comments were overheard.

“Seems like the safest place to stand when Havelka’s shooting is right in front of the target,” said Clint as they watched Havelka get the lowest marksman score in the unit again.

“If Havelka was my assigned Battle Buddy,” said Barnes at the start of the obstacle course that they had to negotiate in pairs, “I think maybe I’d just give up and go back to the barracks. Any punishment for that is bound to be less hassle than trying to get his useless ass over it.”

It wasn’t just the little comments that Clint could see wearing away at Havelka’s eternal optimism, though. They started playing mean tricks, like hiding his belt right before an inspection, or tipping a glass of water on his bunk at bedtime.

And, of course, once Tanzer and Everill worked out what they were doing, they joined in with gusto. Too much gusto, really, especially from Tanzer.

“Whoops,” he said with a beaming grin as Havelka fell flat on his face in the mess hall, his lunch tray going flying. Tanzer didn’t even bother pulling back the foot he’d stuck out for Havelka to trip over.

“Hey, you guys wanna maybe cut him a break?” asked Huerta one evening, after Havelka had spent twenty minutes searching for his toothbrush only to find it in the toilet.

“No idea what you mean, beaner,” said Clint, which made Ziskind start forward to defend his soulmate, fists clenched.

Barnes shifted closer to Clint, folding his arms meaningfully, and Everill stood up from his bunk as well. Ziskind’s eyes darted between them all and he pulled back, glaring at them.

“You’re all assholes,” he said, then stormed off towards the bathroom, where Havelka was presumably trying to clean his teeth with his finger.

“He’s not wrong,” said Pascal.

Tanzer snorted. “Watch it, or maybe we’ll decide the unit is better without you as well, tattletale.”

Pascal rolled his eyes, but he didn’t say anything further.

After lights out, Clint lay awake, a dark twist of unhappiness in his stomach, and reminded himself, yet again, that they needed to do this to block off Hydra’s recruitment channel here.

It didn’t make him feel any better the next morning, when Havelka went to breakfast for the first time without a smile on his face.

****

They had grenade training a couple of days later. While Albini was starting things off with a good shout about safety regulations, most of which weren’t relevant because they’d be using dummy grenades for now, Clint leaned over towards Barnes.

“You need to fuck up on this one.”

Barnes rolled his eyes. “So you can boost your ego by beating me? Nice try. I’m not going fuck up throwing a grenade.” 

He said it as if throwing a grenade was something elementary, like walking. Clint guessed that for him, maybe it was.

“Fuck up the safety rules or something then,” said Clint. “You haven’t made any mistakes in nearly a week, Boy Scout.”

Barnes made a deeply unhappy face, but nodded in acknowledgement as Albini started wrapping up his shout. When it came to Barnes’s turn to throw his dummy grenade, he fumbled it and spent just slightly too long holding it, until he was past the count of three.

“BOOM!” shouted Albini, getting right up close to his face. “You’re blown to pieces, soldier! And so is anyone standing close to you!”

Barnes flinched back from his voice, jaw clenching tight and his hands flexing into fists, but he kept staring straight ahead with no emotion showing on his face.

“Let’s try that again WITHOUT any collateral damage!” announced Albini, then stood back.

Barnes was textbook perfect the second time, but Clint wasn’t going to quibble about that.

“Guess Boy Scout isn’t so perfect after all,” muttered Pascal as they got marched back to barracks. Which was exactly what Clint had wanted people to thinking, so why did he itch to jump in and defend Barnes? 

Back at the barracks, Clint noticed Havelka ducking into the bathroom, and met Barnes’s eyes to jerk his head after him. Barnes nodded back. Steiger would be back in a few minutes to make sure no one had a chance for a break, so it was the perfect time to get caught bullying someone.

Havelka was alone in the bathroom, washing his hands, when they cornered him.

God, this was going to suck.

“Seems like maybe you haven’t been getting the message,” said Clint, remembering a couple of guys who had tried to persuade him to leave the SHIELD basic training, many years ago, because they didn’t think an ex-carnie freelancer who hadn’t been in any of the forces deserved to be there. The joke had been on them back then, because he’d graduated with the highest marksmanship scores SHIELD had ever seen, and neither of them had even made it through the program.

“Guess we’re just going to have to drill it in a bit harder,” added Barnes.

Havelka turned around, giving them a nervous flash of a smile. “What’s that, guys?”

“You’re not wanted here,” said Clint. “You’re a disgrace to this unit, you’re bringing everyone down.”

Havelka’s timid smile collapsed off his face. “Don’t be dicks,” he said, and tried to push past them and leave.

Barnes caught his shoulder and pushed him back against the sinks.

“We’re just telling it like it is. A unit is only as strong as its weakest member, and you’re pretty fucking weak.”

“Can’t fight, can’t shoot, can’t even keep track of your shit,” added Clint. “Do you really think we’re going to baby you through this?”

There were footsteps coming down the corridor outside.

“I didn’t join the Army to play nursemaid,” he added, in a slightly louder voice. “If you’re a liability, you need to just fuck off and leave us to it.”

Clint couldn’t bring himself to look at Havelka’s face right now, so he focused on the mirror behind him, telling himself he was watching the door. Whoever it was outside hadn’t come in, and he wondered if they’d paused to listen. That could be good for them, if they were a Hydra agent listening to evaluate if they’d fit in with those assholes.

Barnes must have heard the footsteps as well because he added, in a very firm voice, “Ignore all that respect and teamwork shit they’ve been feeding us. The strong don’t pander to the weak, they crush them under their bootheels so they can build a better world without them.”

There was a weird cadence to his words that made Clint think he was quoting someone.

“Right,” he agreed, “and if you stay here, you’re gonna get crushed.”

He did glance at Havelka’s face then, and felt like a complete asshole. Havelka had gone pale and was clenching his jaw as if to restrain his emotions.

It was at that moment that Sergeant Steiger swept in, and Clint didn’t think he’d ever been happier to see him. He wanted this moment to be over, and he never wanted to have to do anything like it ever again.

“What the hell is going on here?!” demanded Steiger. “The only person who does any crushing around here is me! Jameson, Clifton, back the fuck off and stop acting like idiots.”

They both pulled back, and Clint did his best to look furious at being caught out.

Havelka immediately slipped away from them, taking a couple of steps towards the door. “Just a misunderstanding, Sergeant,” he said in a very tight voice.

Steiger snorted. “Oh yeah, I know all about these kinds of misunderstandings. Get back to the barracks and tell the others I’m doing an inspection in ten.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” said Havelka, and disappeared out into the corridor.

Steiger looked back at Barnes and Clint. “What the hell am I going to do with you two arrogant assholes?” he asked. “I thought boy scouts were meant to be helpful, friendly and courteous, what the hell happened to you, Jameson?”

Barnes kept his eyes staring straight ahead, but Clint felt him twitch slightly.

“And Clifton, christ. This is the Army, you work in a team with your unit, whoever’s on it, you don’t fucking ‘crush’ them.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” said Clint.

“I think you two need to explain yourselves to the Staff Sergeant,” said Steiger, eyeing them both. “Come along.”

They followed dutifully behind him to Albini’s office, where they got shouted at for a while. Clint let the furious words wash over him and wondered what the difference would be between how a normal Army drill sergeant would react to bullying, and how an undercover Hydra agent would.

What punishment would he have given, if he was in charge of training recruits and found something like the scene in the bathroom going on?

He’d probably just boot him and Barnes out, if he were able to.

Albini gave them many laps of the barracks and a stern warning that they’d be watched closely for any other transgressions. As they started on the laps, Clint wondered if that was because the Army procedures meant he couldn’t just turf them out, or if he was secretly Hydra and considering recruiting them. Or maybe he was just as tired as the rest of them of all the endless shouting and punishments, and just wanted them out of his hair for a bit.

They went round the barracks twice before Clint realised that Barnes was still stiff and silent, jogging with a grim look on his face.

“Hey, you okay, man?” he asked. “I thought that went pretty well, considering.”

“Sure,” said Barnes, without turning to look at him.

Shit. Clint ran back over the whole affair, trying to pinpoint if he’d accidentally been a dick to him, but nothing sprung to mind.

He waited until they were around the back of the barracks, out of sight of anyone else, before asking, “Did I piss you off? Uh, recently I mean.”

“What?” asked Barnes, glancing over at him. “No.”

“Because you seem pissed off,” said Clint, “and trust me, I’ve had a lot of experience with people being pissed off with me.”

“No,” said Barnes again, then stopped running, bending over as if he was out of breath, although there was no way in hell that he was. “Shit,” he muttered.

Clint stopped running as well, hovering near him and wondering what he should be doing.

“This is a really shitty mission for me,” said Barnes eventually, straightening up. “All these orders, and being shouted at.” He made a face. “For seventy years, not being the perfect soldier meant getting my brain fried. Fucking up on purpose is doing a bit of a number on me.”

Clint took in a deep breath because he hadn’t really considered that, not even when Barnes had seemed incapable of fucking up without being prompted but, shit, he really should have. 

And so should Coulson and Steve, both of whom would have thought more deeply about the best agents for this mission than Clint had.

“Why the hell did they send you?” he said out loud, and Barnes straightened up immediately.

“I’m fine, I can complete it,” he said, as if daring Clint to disagree.

Clint shook his head. “Oh, yeah, sure, but it’s not exactly the best first SHIELD mission for you.”

“That’s exactly why I took it,” said Barnes. “I can do any mission that comes my way, I don’t want them thinking I need special treatment. I’m perfectly capable of missions like this, no matter how hard I find them.”

Clint considered that, then sighed. “You really are set on proving you’d make a good SHIELD agent.” 

“I need to be part of taking Hydra down,” said Barnes stubbornly. “Come on, we can’t stay here too long.”

They started jogging again and Clint thought through everything Barnes had said, and everything he hadn’t said. Clint had been on him since the start about not being a perfect soldier, but Barnes hadn’t mentioned this at all, not until now.

Now that they’d finally formed a truce.

God, Clint was a shit mission partner. He was fucking this up. This was clearly important to Barnes, which meant it should be important to Clint as well, because that was what being on a team meant. And whatever else might happen in the future, he and Barnes were on the same team right now.

“I learned to shoot when I was a kid,” he said, as they rounded the back of the barracks again. They were jogging slowly enough for him to talk easily enough, pacing themselves because they had a lot of laps to get around. Barnes glanced over at him but Clint didn’t look back, just kept staring ahead. “I got good because my mentor would beat me if I missed a shot. When we’re at the range here, I keep thinking I’m gonna get hit by a stick if I do less than my very best.”

Barnes let out a long breath. “That sucks.”

“Yeah,” said Clint, although that hadn’t been his point. “Here’s the thing, though. I’m not here because of that asshole. I’m here because Coulson took a chance on making me a SHIELD agent, years back, and he needs me to keep my cover so we can complete this mission, which means missing occasionally.”

“You’re saying I should focus on the orders I got from Coulson and Steve before getting here, instead of what the drill sergeants are saying,” said Barnes.

“Kinda,” said Clint. “It’s not about following orders though, because we’re agents, not soldiers. We have a mission to do, one that isn’t just blindly following orders, and one that people important to us, like Coulson and Steve, believe we can complete. And if doing so means pissing off Albini or Steiger then, well, fuck ‘em. They’re not our COs.”

Barnes was quiet after that, and they did another couple of laps while Clint let him think it over.

“Steve told me I should listen to you while we were here,” he said, after a while. “And you’re the one who keeps saying I need to fuck up more.”

“Oh, I’m definitely not your CO,” said Clint. “I mean, sure, I can keep telling you when you need to make a mistake if it’s easier for you but trust me, I’m not leadership material.”

Barnes threw a quick glance over at him. “I’m not sure that’s true.”

Clint just rolled his eyes at him and kept jogging. It wasn’t like Barnes knew him very well, after all. Once he did, he’d realise just how much of a fuck up Clint was, like everyone else already knew.

****

Over the next few days they got put through tests on all the weapons they’d been taught how to handle, and then an unofficial version of the final PT test, to make sure they were on track to be able to pass in a couple of weeks.

Once it was all done, Havelka got taken off for a quiet word in Albini’s office, then came back looking despondent. “I’m being recycled,” he said, and started packing his gear up.

Being recycled - getting sent to another training battalion who were a few weeks behind the one you’d started with - was something the sergeants had been threatening them all with since the first week, but it hadn’t happened to anyone yet. The only guys that had left had decided to leave of their own accords, and drop outs had fallen off as they’d got further into the program anyway. Everyone now was completely dedicated to getting through and graduating, so the reminder that they could get put back a step that easily was pretty sobering.

“Not much of a fucking surprise,” said Tanzer. “It seems like it’s going to take you quite a few go rounds before you’re worth anything as a soldier.”

Havelka didn’t seem to have the energy to get indignant, because he just rolled his eyes at Tanzer, finished packing up his kit, and disappeared.

Clint glanced over at Barnes, catching his eye and hoping like hell that Havelka’s next unit were more supportive than they’d been. Barnes just offered him a faint shrug.

The rest of them had all made it through to the final phase of basic training, so there was a jovial atmosphere in the mess hall that night.

The final phase, which meant there were only three weeks left. Surely Hydra had to make their move at some point?

Clint glanced around the unit, considering the familiar faces. Other than him and Barnes, Tanzer and Everill were the only others who were blatant about being bigoted assholes. If he was a Hydra agent looking for recruits, he’d take the four of them, and leave it at that. 

How many did they approach out of every training battalion? Probably not as many as they ended up recruiting, given everything that might happen while a guy served in the Army. Hydra would want to have a wide pool of potentials that they could pull into their web once they left the Army, and if they were still worth recruiting. 

Clint would assume that Hydra weren’t that keen on having foot soldiers with families, for example. It made it hard to send them to some shithole base in the middle of nowhere. Add in soldiers who left the Army with either physical or mental bad health and those that changed their minds about being facist drones, and the success rate on converting a guy Hydra had picked out in basic training probably wasn’t all that high.

The ones they did get would already be trained and probably combat-experienced, though, which would make it worthwhile in the long run.

And shit, this really was a very long game Hydra were playing. This was the kind of set-up you had when you assumed you’d exist for a good few decades yet.

“We’re sure they’ll approach the guys they want to recruit here?” Clint asked Barnes in a quiet tone as they headed back to barracks after dinner.

“They fucking better,” said Barnes. “If this turns out to have been a waste of time, I’m gonna…” He trailed off, then shrugged helplessly. “Have to go on another mission to prove my worth, I guess.”

“Nah,” said Clint, “don’t worry about that. I’ll tell Coulson and Hill you did a good job no matter how it ends. It’s not like it’s gonna be your fault if nothing comes of this.”

Barnes sent him a swift, grateful look that Clint pretended not to see.


	4. Chapter 4

The next week training stepped up even further, until they were going on long marches every day, then coming back to run the assault course, or go over weapons training again, or just keep doing more and more physical training until Clint was a little worried he’d start dreaming about push ups.

That wasn’t the main problem he had, though. Nope, the main problem was that now he and Barnes were properly acting like partners, he couldn’t help noticing that the guy was funny in the dry, sarcastic way that Clint had always loved, and that he was competent as hell at enough different things to casually blow Clint’s mind, and he really was hot as hell, even with the stupid Army haircut.

“Shoulda borrowed some of Stark’s robot boots so we could just blast our way through these fucking woods,” said Barnes on one of the many runs they got taken on, and Clint made a really unattractive amused snorting noise. Barnes flashed him a pleased grin and Clint had to put his head down and just keep running to stop himself reacting.

The next day at the range, they waited until the sergeants were all distracted, and then had a proper shooting competition, giving each other exact places on the target to hit that weren’t always the centre, to make sure their scores didn’t get too high. Barnes hit everywhere Clint named, grinning at him with smug satisfaction as he barely even glanced at the target.

Clint hit all his spots as well, of course, so the contest was a draw, but _damn_ , that kind of expert sharpshooting always turned him on.

That wasn’t right though, he wasn’t going to get turned on by Bucky Barnes, the asshole who was replacing him. Even if he wasn’t sure now if he was an asshole, or if he was replacing him.

Except the next morning Clint was cleaning his teeth when Barnes came out of the showers, running his towel across what remained of his hair and not wearing a whole hell of a lot else and Clint nearly swallowed his tongue. How the hell had he been so wrapped up in hating him that he hadn’t noticed he’d been sharing a tower with all that?

Barnes wasn’t the first insanely hot person Clint had been on a team with. He’d coped with having Natasha at his side for years and, okay, they’d fucked a couple of times, but the point was that Clint had never really let that distract him. He’d never fucked Steve, and no one could deny that he was some kind of wet dream, especially in those tight t-shirts he didn’t seem to realise were borderline pornographic. Clint had worked perfectly well with him over the years without freezing up with lust in the middle of a mission.

Not to mention Tony Stark’s ass, although the sheer perfection of that always got balanced out by the abrasiveness of his personality.

The point was that Clint could work perfectly well with someone he’d acknowledged was good looking, and nothing about the job had ever suffered. This mission with Barnes didn’t have to be any different.

“There’s still nothing happening,” he muttered to Barnes as they got put through some field training that he could have done blindfolded, and that Barnes could probably have done in a coma. Probably had at some point.

“Be patient,” said Barnes, “they’re likely to be waiting until after the PT Examination.”

They both ducked behind a tree, Clint automatically crouching down next to Barnes. They were on red group, and were part of a pincer movement to capture blue group’s flag.

“Maybe we should sneak into the drill sergeants’ accommodation and go through their stuff, see if we can find anything,” said Clint. “Who are you thinking for Hydra, anyway? Steiger, maybe. Albini’s seems too obvious, like he might tone it back if he was Hydra?”

“Do you always talk this much on missions?” hissed Barnes, just as they got signalled to move forward.

Clint stayed close to the ground as they crept closer to the blue team’s base. “Pretty much, yeah,” he said, quietly. “But this isn’t a mission, this is a kids game.”

Barnes sent him a furious glare, and then they launched the attack and Clint finally bothered paying attention to what was happening.

Afterwards, after they’d captured the flag, then successfully defended their own in return because a team with Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier on it wasn’t about to lose, not even when they were downplaying their skills, he returned to the conversation.

“What about if we just went up to them and whispered ‘Hail Hydra’?” he suggested as they walked back to camp.

Barnes looked at him as if he’d lost his marbles. “What?”

“Think about it,” said Clint. “We go around them all, give them the word and a significant look, and see who bites. Then we can let Coulson and Hill know, and go home winners.”

“And if we say it to someone who isn’t Hydra, who then reports us?” asked Barnes. “Or even if whoever is Hydra is slightly cleverer than that?”

Clint let out a long, dramatic sigh. “You’re always just shooting my ideas down. I feel like you could be bringing a bit less pessimism to the table.”

“I feel like you could be bringing a bit less utter bullshit,” returned Barnes. “We just need to stick the course, and trust we’ve been big enough assholes to get given the secret handshake at the end, or whatever.”

Clint sighed again, feeling his shoulders slump. “I know.”

Barnes reached out and gave his shoulder a slap, then just left his hand there, heavy and somehow comforting. “Don’t worry, you’ve definitely been a big enough asshole. Every neo-fascist around is gonna want you on their team.”

Clint scowled at him, shrugging off his hand, and tried to ignore that his touch had sent warm shivers running along his skin. He’d spent too long trapped in this hellhole of toxic masculinity and now he was apparently desperate for an affectionate touch. When they got back to New York, he was going to have to make sad eyes at Natasha until she cuddled him for a bit.

He ruthlessly suppressed the mental image that flashed up of getting Barnes to cuddle him. Just because they didn’t out-and-out hate each other any more didn’t mean they were at the platonic cuddles stage.

They both made it through the PT tests with excellent scores, although not too excellent. At one point during the push up section of the test, Clint had to catch Barnes’s eye and give him a glare to remind him to start slowing down as if he was getting tired. Barnes rolled his eyes, but obediently slowed down and started huffing out breaths.

After the results had been announced, all three platoons of their training battalion were gathered on the parade ground. Albini and the other two staff sergeants made them march about a bit, just for their own amusement as far as Clint could tell, then they were lined up for an announcement. The other sergeants and instructors appeared and grouped together behind the staff sergeants. Steiger was giving them all a worryingly cheerful grin.

“We’re getting close now, lads! Only a last little bit to get through and you will graduate into the United States Army, and I’ll get to stop staring at your ugly mugs. Don’t go thinking these last two weeks are going to be easy, though, these are going to be the toughest two weeks of the course! You better be ready for anything!”

Clint was ready to go home, but he didn’t think that was what Albini meant.

“Tonight we will be experiencing the joy of nighttime combat exercises, which I’m sure you will love every second of. If you are very lucky, and don’t fuck up too badly, you may even get an hour or two of sleep! And then tomorrow we will be heading off for field training, so you won’t be seeing your nice cosy bunks until Wednesday.”

That would be three nights out in the woods, almost certainly eating nothing but MREs and sleeping in short snatches. Fantastic. Just what Clint wanted after a night running around with a gun playing wargames.

“And you’re sure we can’t just go home now?” he said under his breath, and felt Barnes twitch next to him. Clint knew without looking that he was suppressing the urge to glare at him, so Clint just huffed a sigh and continued pretending to care.

The nighttime combat exercises were every bit as annoying as Clint had thought they would be. Man, the minute this mission was over, he was going to spend a week in his bed and fuck anyone who tried to make him get up in the middle of the night.

They made it back to the barracks with enough time for an hour’s sleep before they got yelled awake and had to pack their kit up for the field exercises. They didn’t get breakfast before they were being marched off into the woods, half of them just moving on autopilot and the other half sleep-walking.

They spent most of the day walking, although not in a straight line. They got split into smaller groups during parts of the day and made to race to the next checkpoint, or half the platoon were sent on ahead to set an ambush and the rest of them had to spot them before they got sprung.

The only good thing about it was that Clint really didn’t have the brainpower to think about who might be Hydra, not even when they stopped for twenty minutes to gulp down some lunch.

“If I ever complain about Steve’s training style again, just remind me of this,” he said to Barnes in an undertone as Albini started to shout at them to get going again while half of them were still eating.

Barnes snorted, grabbing his pack and swinging it onto his back with what was becoming an annoying amount of ease. “I think maybe you’ve forgotten just how annoying his rousing speeches are,” he said. “Not to mention the looks he gives Sam.”

Clint made a face as they started to march again. “Oh god, yeah, all those my-heart-belongs-only-to-you looks. Ugh.”

He glanced over at where Huerta and Ziskind were marching next to each other, both of them looking worn down. Being soulmates might have meant they could heal all the bruises and stiff muscles that came with being active all day every day for weeks, but nothing else about this had been easier for them. He was pretty sure that they were both working twice as hard as they would have otherwise, because they didn’t want to be the reason that the other one didn’t graduate. Plus they couldn’t have had more than ten minutes alone together since they chimed. Clint tried to imagine meeting his soulmate and not being able to have any time to properly get to know them for the first two months, but got too stuck on what it would even be like to have a soulmate.

He’d always just assumed it would be like how he and Natasha worked together, knowing each other’s moves before they made them, but it had taken them years to reach that level. Even now, he could see how Huera and Ziskind moved together, steps perfectly in sync, Huerta not even bothering to glance at Ziskind as he handed him his rifle so he could adjust the strap of his pack.

Clint couldn’t imagine having anything that easy and instinctive with anyone. 

The little ache in his chest that came whenever he thought about soulmates too much started to throb, and he took a deep breath and rubbed at it briefly.

“Please tell me you’re not already getting heartburn,” said Barnes. “We’ve got a lot of MREs to get through over the next couple of days.”

Clint let out a sigh, letting his hand drop. “Gonna order so much pizza when we get back,” he said. “Gonna just lie in bed eating pizza for days.”

“Watching Disney movies?” asked Barnes. “So you can learn how to be as mysterious as the dark side of the moon?”

“Fuck you, I’m already exactly that mysterious,” said Clint, which earned him a snort of derision. “And for a guy who acts like he’s pissed to have been introduced to that song, you seem to remember it pretty well.”

“Yeah, well, my memory’s shit for some things, and all too good for others,” said Barnes.

Clint started humming it under his breath and Barnes let out a heartfelt groan, then jogged ahead for a few paces to get away, falling in next to Everill instead. Clint just smirked at his back and started plotting how to make sure that the first Avengers movie night when they got back was _Mulan_.

****

It was dusk when they finally stopped for the night in a large field and were told to pitch camp.

They’d been issued tiny two-man tents before they left the base, and Clint had his and Barnes’s pitched pretty much before Barnes came over to help. Around him, it was becoming very clear that quite a few guys hadn’t done a lot of camping before.

He and Barnes tucked their packs away into their tent and spread out their bedrolls, then stood and watched Everill and Tanzer putting up their tent. Just as Everill was driving in the last peg, Clint cleared his throat.

“It’s inside out,” he said, helpfully.

Everill paused as Tanzer stared at it for a moment, then swore.

“Fucking idiot,” he said to Everill, smacking his shoulder. “Why didn’t you notice?”

“Why didn’t _you_ notice?” asked Barnes, and earned himself a dark glare. Nothing was ever Tanzer’s fault, he always found someone else to blame.

Everill hesitated, looking at the tent again. “Does it matter if it’s inside out?”

“I bet you ten bucks it matters a whole hell of a lot to Steiger,” said Clint. “Who is coming this way.”

“Fuck,” muttered Everill, and he and Tanzer started ripping out the pegs so they could flip it around.

Steiger was inspecting the tents as he came, pointing out who were going to be the victims of a flood if it rained in the night, or just find the whole thing had blown away. When he got to Clint and Barnes’s, he stared at it for a long moment then, apparently unable to find fault, glared at them. Clint had a feeling the sergeants had found the day just as exhausting and annoying as the rest of them.

“Shoulda known a boy scout would have this part down,” he said. “Guess that means you two can trot over and help sort out dinner.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” said Clint and Barnes in perfect sync, while Clint did his best not to get too annoyed that Barnes had got the credit when Clint had been the one to do most of the work.

As they headed over to where the mess tent had been pitched to help hand out MREs, Barnes glanced at him. “You’re pretty good with tents. You done much camping?”

Clint couldn’t hold in a grin as a little warm bubble burst in his stomach, because Steiger might not have given him credit, but at least someone was.

Maybe Barnes wasn’t all that bad after all.

“I grew up in a circus,” he said. “After putting up a big top, these little things are child’s play.”

“Huh,” said Barnes, taking that in. Clint wondered how the hell he hadn’t known that before, because it wasn’t as if he made much of a secret of it. He guessed he hadn’t really taken the time to actually talk about that kinda shit in front of him when he was busy being pissed about losing his place on the team. “That explains a lot. I shoulda guessed you’d been a clown.”

Scratch all that. Clint fucking hated the guy.

****

The thing about two-man Army tents was that they were actually more like one-and-a-half man, and even that was pushing it a bit when one of those guys was well over six foot and the other was built like a tank.

Clint should have been able to drop off to sleep almost immediately, after the day they’d had and the sleepless night before it, but he found himself blinking up at the dark canvas, feeling as much as hearing Barnes breathing beside him. There must have only been an inch or two between them, close enough that Clint could feel the heat from his body.

He tried to remember when he’d last shared a bed with someone, and came up with a depressing result. He usually found himself a hook-up every few weeks, but it must have been months before the mission had even started since he’d last found someone for a bit of fun. Had he really been so caught up in being pissy over Barnes being on the team that he hadn’t even thought about getting laid?

Barnes let out a frustrated-sounding sigh then shifted onto his side, suddenly close enough for Clint to feel his breath. Clint considered shifting away from him, but the tent canvas was far too close on the other side of him so instead he just forced himself to relax, going over his muscles one by one until they were all slack, and then shut his eyes.

Barnes’s breaths were slow and relaxed, and Clint could feel his lungs pull in time with them. He started to drift away finally, the thought floating across his mind that this was a lot nicer than sharing a set of bunkbeds. 

It almost felt like he could get used to this.

And just like that, he was startled wide awake again, because this was _Bucky Barnes_. He should not be having sleepy happy thoughts about getting to sleep next to him, he should be trying to work out how to make sure this never happened again.

Fuck. This detente between them wasn’t just forced comradery, or enjoying the guy’s sense of humour. Clint’s stupid fucking feelings were getting involved, latching onto the worst possible person for him to be having emotions about, just like always.

He shut his eyes again, more resolutely, and told himself it was just the closeness of the mission and the impact of the stress of going through basic training. Barnes was the only person who knew Clint’s real identity, the only one he could properly talk to, and they were relying entirely on each other while lying to everyone else around them. That’s all it was, Clint would have been feeling some kind of affection towards anyone who’d been assigned as his mission partner on this one.

He did manage to drop off after that, but it was a cold night and Clint had become too used to the AI-controlled temperatures of the Tower. He found himself drifting half-awake from the cold more than once, huddling down deeper in his sleeping bag until he made it fully back to sleep because there was no way he was waking up enough to do more than that.

At some point after he’d shivered hard enough to stir most of the way awake again, something warm moved in close against his back, and then wrapped around him, like a heated blanket. He relaxed back into it, letting the warmth pull him back down fully into sleep.

The next time he woke up, it was morning and Barnes was pressed up all along his back, spooning him around his sleeping bag.

Clint froze in place, staring at the canvas in front of him for a wild moment.

Shit. How the hell had they ended up like this?

And why the fuck did it have to feel so good? Clint really needed to get laid as soon as this mission was over.

Except, he realised with a sinking feeling, he didn’t just want to get laid. He wanted to get laid _by Barnes_. He wanted to be waking up in his arms because they’d fucked through the night, not just because it was cold. He wanted to see if the smile Barnes gave him when they were basking in the afterglow was as pretty as the one he had when Clint made him laugh with a shitty joke.

Clint squeezed his eyes tight shut, wondering if there was some way to go back to sleep and wake up without any inconvenient feelings.

There was a sudden inhalation of air from Barnes, then a long exhalation against the back of Clint’s neck, before his arm moved and he rolled away, leaving Clint feeling very cold, even with the morning sun starting to warm up the canvas.

Outside, he could hear the sergeants starting to get everyone up, so he just let out his own long breath, then sat up, not looking over at Barnes. 

“Ready for more running round the woods?” he asked, keeping his tone as casual as possible. He didn’t want to have to talk about Barnes cuddling him any more than he wanted to think about it, and there was no reason to anyway. Repression had got Clint a long way in his life, it could carry him just a bit further.

“Oh yeah, nothing better,” said Barnes, and if there was a false note of forced amusement in his voice, Clint just ignored it.

And did his best not to think about how they’d be sharing the tent again that night, and it was likely to be just as cold.

****

They were made to pack up the camp before they got breakfast, then the whole training battalion was lined up in their platoons as Albini and the other staff sergeants went over them, checking none of the uniform standards had slipped while they were fucking about in the woods. Clint was pretty much done with being shouted at, so he didn’t bother with any deliberate mistakes this time.

When Albini stopped in front of Barnes, he raised his eyebrows. “Your belt’s twisted. You’re letting yourself down, Boy Scout,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’re only perfect when things are easy in the barracks? That’ll be ten press-ups.”

As soon as he’d moved on, Clint turned to look at Barnes, raising an eyebrow as he dropped to the ground. Barnes gave him a self-satisfied half-smile followed by a wink before he started his press-ups.

Clint had to swallow back a snort of amusement, turning his head to the front again as a warm glow seeped into his chest, just because some guy that he’d hated until a couple of weeks ago had managed to deliberately break the rules without needing to be prompted.

Once the sergeants felt that everyone had been sufficiently shouted at for the moment, they divided them up into groups of different sizes, mixing up the platoons. 

“We want to see how you do working with guys you haven’t been sleeping, eating and shitting next to for two months,” said Albini. “Or maybe we’re just sick of your faces and want a break.”

He glanced down at his clipboard, reading out names and which sergeant would be taking charge of each group. Clint kept his fingers crossed that he and Barnes would end up in the same group, but it didn’t seem likely if they were trying to put people who didn’t know each other so well together.

Which was why it was a complete surprise when Albini read out, “Clifton, Everill, Jameson, Tanzer, King and Langley, you’re gonna have the pleasure of Sergeants Steiger and Curtis,” and then moved on to the next group.

Not only was their group a lot smaller than any of the others, and with two sergeants instead of just the one, but it included all four of the clique that Barnes and Clint had accidentally formed. King and Langley were from one of the other platoons, the same one that Sergeant Curtis had been working with. Clint didn’t know much about either of them, but he was pretty sure he’d seen a confederate flag tattooed on King’s bicep.

This had to be it. They had to have separated out the six they wanted to start grooming for Hydra.

Which meant Steiger had to be a Hydra agent. Clint tried to find an element of surprise within himself over that, and failed.

The instant they were given the command to fall out, Clint glanced over at Barnes, who gave him a serious look back, and a tiny nod that meant he was thinking the same thing.

Holy shit, this mission might finally be coming to an end. They just had to play along for long enough to get the names of everyone involved, then they could get the hell out of here. 

Neither he nor Barnes said much as they formed up with the others to wait for the sergeants.

“There’s not many of us,” said Tanzer. “Think that means this is the elite group, or the remedial one?”

“Given you’re in the group, it’s gotta be remedial,” said Everill, and earned himself a solid punch to the arm, delivered with a wide grin and a braying laugh.

God, let this be the last day or two that Clint had to spend in Tanzer’s company.

Steiger and Curtis marched them all off into the woods for about an hour, keeping them in parade ground formation and complete silence. Clint spent most of that time trying to work out how he’d start grooming a bunch of assholes to be cannon-fodder for a neo-Nazi terrorist group, and beginning to suspect that he was going to have to listen to a lot of propaganda.

Eventually, they marched into a clearing that had a rough dirt track running through it, and an Army truck pulled to one side.

“Okay,” said Curtis, “everyone in the truck. Quick, quick, no dawdling.”

Okay, Clint hadn’t been expecting that. He followed Tanzer into the truck, Curtis shut the doors on them, and they took off on the bumpy track.

“Thank fuck we’re not going to have to walk everywhere,” said Everill.

“Makes a nice change from stomping about,” agreed Langley.

Clint glanced at Barnes and got a little frown back in response.

The truck didn’t have any windows, so with the back shut up they had no idea where they were going. Clint had been keeping a pretty good idea in his head of where they were in relation to the base so far, but this was going to throw him right off. From the look on Barnes’s face, he was thinking the same thing.

They drove for about another hour, then the truck pulled up and someone banged on the side. “Come on out, lads! Enough sitting on your asses!”

They were still in the middle of the woods but the truck was parked between two long wooden cabins. Steiger grinned at them as they climbed out, glancing around with surprise.

“Good news! You don’t have to sleep on the dirt tonight. We’re giving you lot the VIP treatment!” announced Steiger, and he was grinning with crooked delight again. Clint didn’t trust him when he grinned like that.

“While those other assholes are off running about in the woods,” added Curtis, “You lot are going to have a nice sit down in a cabin, followed by a full night of sleep on decent mattresses. Oh, and we have beer as well.” 

There was a general, ragged cheer that Clint made sure to join in with.

“So, what? We are the elite group?” asked Tanzer.

Steiger laughed. “I guess you could say that,” he said. “Curtis and I have handpicked you guys to be part of something very special. This is an opportunity you’re gonna want to grab with both hands.”

Oh yeah, this was definitely it. They were finally about to be inducted into Hydra.

Thank fuck.

They all put their stuff in one of the cabins, which had a row of proper beds in the main room, a lot more comfortable than the Army bunks they’d been in for weeks. Curtis and Steiger had their own little room at the end.

“Jesus, this is fancy,” said Everill, lying back on his bed to test the mattress. “Did we luck out or what?”

Clint caught Barnes glaring down at his own bed as if contemplating setting it on fire, and gently kicked the edge of his boot to break him out of the moment. Barnes glanced up at him and Clint pointedly raised his eyebrows.

Barnes let out a long breath, then pinned a smirk on as he looked around at the others. “Guess being the elite is fucking worth it. Fuck those other guys, am I right?”

“C’mon,” said Clint, glancing across at the other cabin. “Let’s go see what we’ve gotta do to earn all this.”

The other cabin was divided into two rooms, one of which was fitted out like a classroom. For the rest of the day, they sat in it and were gently indoctrinated. Curtis and Steiger gave them a very serious talk about how all this was top secret, and they were being inducted into an elite set of troops within the Army who were patriots dedicated to preserving the American way of life against the enemies both within and without the country. 

“Sometimes drastic measures have to be taken to protect ourselves,” said Steiger. “You might be called on to help at any time, and it’s important that you follow orders, don’t ask questions, and don’t say a word about it to anyone else.”

It was really depressing. From the overview Curtis and Steiger were giving, Hydra was embedded into several parts of the Army, just like they had been in SHIELD. Clint kept an intrigued expression on his face to signal how interested Clifton was in becoming part of this whole thing, and wondered just how many other military institutions Hydra were part of.

God, he fucking hated the bastards so much. And watching the way they were reeling in the other guys in the room, he felt vaguely sorry for them. They were handing themselves over to become terrorists and torturers, to betray their oaths of enlistment before they’d even graduated, all because these guys had told them they were special and promised them some beer and a soft mattress.

Barnes sat through it all with a perfectly blank expression. After the talk from Steiger, there were videos about the creeping dangers of globalisation and liberalism, and how they needed to dedicate themselves completely to eradicating the enemies of America. It was all a bit vague, but Clint caught a glimpse of Stark’s face in the background of the section about the softening of America and the undermining of its military. No doubt the specifics of exactly who was the enemy would be made clearer later on, once they knew they had these guys completely hooked.

Clint glanced over at Barnes, whose blank expression was starting to slip, then shifted in his chair just enough to make a noise and catch his attention. Barnes glanced over at him, then threw on an ugly smirk that Clint had a feeling he’d copied from Tanzer. “Making America great again,” he said. “Just what we signed up for, huh, Frank?”

“Right,” agreed Clint.

“You guys are going to fit right in,” said Steiger, grinning at them. “You’re the kind of guys that stand up and do something when it needs doing, no pointless handwringing over hurt feelings. We all knew Havelka wasn’t going to make it, but he was too weak to step back and get out the way of the guys who deserved to pull ahead.”

“And that’s what we’re about as well,” added Curtis. “Doing what needs to be done, and not worrying about the cost. The future we’re going to build is worth some sacrifices.”

Clint began to worry that he’d blow their cover by throwing up. God, thank fuck they were going to be shutting this shit down.

After an afternoon of indoctrination, Steiger pulled a grill out of one of the cabins and Curtis opened a cooler of beers. They all had burgers, sitting around under the trees as the sun went down and talking about how the others would be on MREs and trying to get their tents set up.

“Don’t go thinking that being part of this group is easy,” said Steiger, “but, boys, it is more than worth it. There are plenty of perks along the way to make up for the tough shit, even if we weren’t making the world a better place with it.”

Barnes twitched hard enough to spill some of his beer, drawing everyone’s attention.

Clint forced out a laugh. “Jesus, Jameson, two months without a drink and you’re a complete lightweight.”

He could see Barnes pulling himself together, but hopefully no one else knew him well enough to spot that. “We can’t all be closet alcoholics,” he said, which wasn’t the greatest comeback but was enough to cover his reaction.

It was a bit later, after the sun had gone down, that Clint finally found an excuse to slip back into the cabin with Barnes following him.

“Okay,” said Clint, “we got them. What now?”

“There’s an office next to the classroom in the other cabin,” said Barnes. “I could see a couple of filing cabinets in there.”

“Their records,” said Clint. “Shit, yes, the motherlode. We need to get copies of them, find out exactly who has gone through this place.”

Barnes nodded. “Tonight,” he said. “Once everyone’s asleep. And then we can go back to the base with them all tomorrow, and then fuck off back home.”

“Fuck yeah,” said Clint, grinning at him. “We’ll be having take out pizza and playing Mario Kart this time tomorrow.”

Clint wasn’t sure how to interpret the look Barnes gave him. It looked like a frown, but there was something else to it in the set of his jaw. “You can get a break from me,” he said, as if he were agreeing. “No more bunks, we’ll have whole floors to ourselves.”

When they’d started this mission, getting away from Barnes had been all Clint could think about. Why did the idea of being on a different floor to him feel so bad now?

How the hell had Clint caught so many feelings so quickly?

“Nothing saying you can’t play Mario Kart with me,” he said, trying to sound easy-going about it. “Unless you’re afraid of getting your ass kicked.”

Barnes sent him a startled look but they were interrupted by Langley coming in to use the bathroom, and Clint never got a response.

Which was fine. It wasn’t like he’d really been asking Barnes to hang out, not properly. 

There would be plenty of time once they were back at the Tower for him to ask him, anyway. He should probably work on making it more clear that he was done with being an asshole towards him, and wanting to hang out would do that.

****

That night, they both lay awake after everyone had gone to sleep. The combination of soft mattresses, beer, and just how little sleep they’d all had for weeks meant that pretty much everyone went straight out, but Clint wasn’t willing to take any risks when they were this close to finally being done. They waited until an hour after lights out, then Clint sat up and glanced over at Barnes’s bed, hoping he hadn’t nodded off.

The dark shape of Barnes sat up as well, so Clint just gave him a nod he wasn’t sure he’d see, then got up.

He’d left most of his clothes on when they’d gone to bed, so he just had to pull his boots on and pick up the flashlight he’d left ready for himself. He crept out of the room, trying to look like he was heading for the bathroom in case anyone was awake, and Barnes followed a moment later.

Outside, Clint could see King, who was on watch, slumped against one of the cabins and looking as if he was sleeping standing up. It was almost like having a couple of beers after an exhausting few weeks was a really bad way to try and stay awake for a watch shift when everything was quiet and dark.

Clint and Barnes found it easy to sneak past him in the dark and into the other cabin. They ghosted through the classroom in the dark to the door of the office, which was locked.

“I got this,” whispered Clint, dropping to his knees and flicking on his flashlight to examine the lock. Barnes moved automatically to block the brief flash of light from the window with his body.

It was a cheap lock and Clint had the door open in moments. The office was dark inside, but the only window pointed in the opposite direction to where King was drowsing so once the door was shut behind them, Barnes clicked on the light.

“Okay, records,” said Clint, heading for a tall filing cabinet in the corner and pulling open the top drawer.

“Right,” agreed Barnes, sitting down at the aging computer and turning it on. “Everyone who has been recruited in the last couple of decades. They must keep track somehow.”

“Well, here’s all their personnel files,” said Clint, flicking through the folders in the cabinet. “Oh, here’s mine.”

He pulled out the folder labelled _Frank Clifton_ and glanced through it. It looked like a copy of his Army record, along with a sheet at the back of evaluations. “ _Athletic, aggressive, will be an excellent shot after further training_ ,” he read out, and snorted. “What the fuck do these guys know?” His eyes darted down further over the page. “ _Has a chip on his shoulder that can be manipulated, will make_...oh those fuckers.”

“What?” asked Barnes, clicking through the folders on the computer.

Clint scowled at him. “ _Will make a loyal but fairly generic soldier_ ,” he finished reading.

Barnes sniggered under his breath as Clint slammed the folder shut and shoved it back in the drawer. “Guess they really don’t know you,” he said. “There’s nothing generic about you.”

Clint wasn’t sure how to take that, so he just concentrated on flicking through the other folders, seeing the names of the others who’d been picked to come out here.

“What does mine say?” asked Barnes.

Clint pulled out the _Bryan Jameson_ folder. “Pretty much the same,” he said, skimming over the evaluation form. “ _Athletic, easily trained, follows orders well…_ Oh for-” He glanced over at Barnes with a scowl. “ _Leadership potential._ ”

Barnes laughed. “Finally, someone sees it.”

Clint put his folder back and shut the drawer, then opened the next one down to find more personnel files. “We’re not going to be able to take all these and keep them hidden,” he said. “There must just be a list of names somewhere.”

“Or the same files backed up digitally,” said Barnes, swivelling in his chair to gesture at the screen, where he had a database open.

Clint rolled his eyes. “Taking the whole computer with us is going to be almost as obvious as sneaking out with a filing cabinet.”

Barnes stared at him for a moment, then let out a sigh. “How is the guy who was born in 1917 the tech-savvy guy?” he muttered, then picked up a USB drive from the desk and waved it at Clint.

“Okay, how was I meant to know they’d left one of those lying around?” asked Clint, giving up on the filing cabinet and coming over to the computer to watch as Barnes plugged in the drive and started copying the files.

He leaned on the back of Barnes’s chair to see the screen and was suddenly aware of just how close they were. 

Almost as close as they had been in the tent last night.

Shit, he couldn’t let himself think about that, not right now.

And then, of course, Barnes tipped his head to grin up at Clint, his eyes sparkling with joy. “We did it,” he said. “We completed the mission.”

“A mission’s not complete until you’re back at the base,” said Clint automatically, letting his mouth speak Coulson’s words so he wouldn’t give in to the temptation to lean down and kiss Bucky.

Shit, this was getting out of control. This was going to make working with the guy even harder than it had been when Clint had thought he hated him.

Barnes just rolled his eyes, then looked back at the screen at the file transfer. “Close enough,” he said. “We sneak back to bed, keep jumping through hoops until we’re back at the base, and then just jump in the car and head back to New York. My first SHIELD mission, all done and dusted, and with no collateral damage.”

He sounded so pleased that Clint didn’t bother warning him off jinxing them, not when it would probably be just as easy as that.

The files finished copying and Barnes grabbed the USB, then they turned out the light and left the office, shutting the door behind them. Clint crouched down to lock it again behind them, and that was when it all went wrong.

Because Barnes had fucking jinxed them.

“What the fuck are you guys doing?”

Everill was standing in the doorway, flashlight playing over where Clint was crouched down, clearly fiddling with the lock, while Barnes shielded him from the window. The guard shift must have changed, and apparently he was way more awake than King had been.

“Ah,” said Clint, his brain whirring as fast as it could, which never quite seemed to be fast enough. “Just having a look around, you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” said Everill. “Looks more like you’re breaking into locked military property. There’s gonna be classified shit in there.”

Well, at least he didn’t know that they’d already been inside, got the classified shit, and now it was tucked away safely in Barnes’s pocket.

“We wanted to know more about these guys,” said Barnes. “Doesn’t anything about this secret club feel suspicious to you?”

Everill frowned, and Clint immediately jumped on the hesitation.

“A lot of that stuff they were saying earlier, didn’t that seem a bit, you know? Fascist-y?”

Everill’s moment of doubt passed immediately, his jaw tightening with determination. “Most of it was the same shit you’ve been saying since day one,” he pointed out which, okay, fair point. They hadn’t exactly helped with preventing Everill from being indoctrinated, and maybe had even pushed him further into it.

Those were the kinds of sacrifices you had to make sometimes, when you were looking at the bigger picture.

“Alright, alright,” said Clint, holding his hands up. “Maybe you’re right. I just got curious, but I guess we should trust the sergeants. We’ll just go back to bed, leave you to your watch.”

He started moving for the door, giving Everill a grin, but apparently Everill wasn‘t quite that dumb.

“No way,” said Everill. “Steiger’s gonna want to know about this.”

“No,” said Barnes and started forward with clear, murderous intent on his face. So much for trying to maintain their cover and play this one off.

Everill immediately dashed out of the classroom. “Soldiers out of bed! Sergeant Steiger! Sergeant Curtis! Clifton and Jameson are out of bed and fucking about!”

Shit. Barnes chased after him but it was too late, lights were already going on in the other cabin.

Clint grabbed Barnes’s wrist. “Too late, we’ve got to go,” he said, because that USB in Barnes’s pocket was the most important thing right now. If they got caught and searched, they’d lose the whole point of this fucking crappy mission.

Everill had raised his rifle but his hands were shaking just enough that Clint didn’t think he’d use it. “You stay where you are!”

“Not a hope, kid,” said Clint, as the doors of the cabin burst open and the others all came pouring out.

He tugged Barnes again, then set off at a sprint towards the nearest bit of woodland, hoping like hell they’d be able to lose the others in the darkness. He could hear Barnes’s boots thumping behind him for a handful of steps before he drew ahead because of course the fucking super-soldier was faster than Clint.

“They were trying to get in the office!” he heard Everill say behind him. “I think they’re some kinda spies!”

Immediately gunshots rang out. Apparently Steiger and Curtis weren’t as timid about shooting as Everill was.

“Fuck,” muttered Barnes, glancing back.

“Keep going!” said Clint, because they were nearly at the treeline.

“After them!” shouted Steiger behind them. “Quit pussyfooting around! You’re soldiers now, more than that, you’re part of the special elite and those assholes are the enemy! Get them!”

More scattered shots were fired, some of the bullets whizzing closer to Clint than he was really happy about. Barnes made the treeline, bursting straight through a bush and then carrying on, and Clint followed him, weaving a bit to try and throw their aim off.

Apparently not enough. There were a couple more gunshots, then a sudden, sharp pain in Clint’s bicep, one he recognised all too well. He couldn’t stop himself from making a shocked cry but gritted his teeth and kept going, following after the dark shape of Barnes as they headed further into the woods.

Once they were far enough into the trees to be hidden the others stopped firing, but Clint could hear running boots behind them and shouting from the sergeants. He grabbed at his arm, grasping the wound as tightly as he could, and carried on running after Barnes, hoping like hell that he knew where they were going.

“You okay?” asked Barnes, glancing back. “You hurt?”

“Only a little bit,” said Clint. “Keep going, we need to get away.”

He thought he saw Barnes nod, but it was dark enough that he couldn't be sure. He just focused on not running into a tree and not bleeding out, and followed.


	5. Chapter 5

Twenty minutes of running through the woods later, Clint was still gripping tightly to his arm and ignoring the sensation of blood seeping out under his hand and the stabs of pain that came with every step. He’d been shot often enough to know that it wasn’t a major injury, although the idea of trying to look after it in the woods without a first aid kit was pretty demoralising.

They just needed to get back to the Tower to hand the intel over, and then he could go to the medical unit there and listen to their disappointed sighs as they loaded him up with antibiotics and tetanus shots, or whatever they’d decide to punish him with.

For now, he just kept following Barnes through the woods, hoping like hell that he knew where he was going. It was dark enough that Clint didn’t always spot a root or a rock until he’d stumbled over it, but he managed to keep on his feet. There were shouts behind them, not far enough away for them to relax just yet, but Clint was hoping the others wouldn’t be able to track them in the dark and they’d lose them soon.

Barnes glanced back at him, but it was too dark for Clint to see the look on his face. He just gave him an encouraging nod and tried to look as if he could keep going all night, even as his hand slipped in the wet blood he was trying to keep inside his arm.

Barnes looked back to the front, turning slightly to the left, and Clint kept after him. They were heading for a dark shape that he realised was an overgrown thicket and he started to wonder if maybe super-soldier eyesight wasn’t as good as he’d expected it to be. 

Barnes plunged straight into the thicket, apparently immune to the branches whipping into him. Clint paused, giving his arm a tighter squeeze.

“Uh,” he started, in the quietest voice he could manage.

Barnes looked back at him, then reached out and grabbed Clint’s uninjured arm and dragged him after him. The only thing that stopped Clint from protesting was a shout from behind them that reminded Clint of the importance of staying quiet.

Barnes dragged him past branches and leaves, pulling him down into the middle of the thicket where there was a tiny space, just large enough for them to crouch down.

“Dude?” hissed Clint, under his breath. “The fuck?”

Barnes just shushed him.

Clint glared at him, shifting out of the way of a branch poking into his ass.

There were another couple of shouts out in the woods, closer than they had been, and Clint froze still, training his breathing to go slow and steady. He kept glaring at Barnes as he did so because it was important to get his anger across regardless of whether or not Barnes could see it in the dark.

Two sets of footsteps came pounding by, then hesitated briefly just ahead of the thicket. Clint could feel Barnes holding just as still as he was.

“This way,” said Steiger’s voice, and both sets thumped off again, away into the wood.

Barnes and Clint held still for a couple of minutes longer, then Clint let out a deep, slow breath.

“We shoulda kept moving,” he hissed. “If they double-back-”

“You’re injured,” said Barnes.

“I’m fine,” said Clint, because there was no way in hell Barnes was going to be able to see just how much blood had now soaked into his sleeve. “Don’t worry about me.”

Barnes made an irritated noise, then fumbled for something, carefully shifting around in the tiny space inside the bush until he was facing Clint. A second later a faint light flicked on, pointed down at the earth.

“Turn that out!” snapped Clint. “Do you want to get caught?”

“Steve wasn’t the only one who gave me advice about working with you before we left,” said Barnes, ignoring him. “Natasha was very clear that if you got hurt, I needed to see it myself before judging if it was minor or not.”

God damn it, Nat. Of course she had.

The flashlight rose between them, where hopefully most of its light would be hidden by their bodies and the bushes, and shone on the wet, red mess of Clint’s arm.

Barnes sucked in a breath. “And she was right.”

“It’s just a graze,” said Clint. “It looks like more blood than it is. Besides, it’s not like we can do anything about it right now, anyway.”

“Yeah, I’m not paying any attention to your opinions on it,” said Barnes. “Be quiet and let me look properly.”

Clint let out a sigh but let Barnes carefully pull aside the rip in his jacket sleeve, suppressing a wince at the sting. Barnes was so close to him that he could feel him breathing, which wasn’t helping much with his resolution to just ignore his attraction to him. The flashlight flicked across the injury a couple of times, then gently lowered to the earth.

“It’s bleeding more than I like. The last thing we need is you suffering from bloodloss while we’re trying to get back to base, so I’m gonna bandage it,” said Barnes, still holding Clint’s arm with one hand while gently touching around the edges of the wound as if to feel out the extent of the blood. “Not like I need my left sleeve any-”

He cut off with a breathy, shocked sound that made Clint glance down to see-

Shit.

There was a golden glow surrounding Barnes’s fingers, right over Clint’s wound.

“What?” he managed, as a weird, tingling sensation spread over the hurt of the wound.

Barnes dropped his arm and shifted back as far as he could in the confines of the bush. “No way,” he said. “No fucking way. We’d know by now, wouldn’t we?” There was a note of desperation in his voice that verged on panic. “There’s no fucking way we’re soulmates. You _hate_ me.”

“I don’t hate you,” said Clint feeling as dazed as if he were going into shock from bloodloss. “I’ve actually been enjoying getting to know you better over this mission.”

“No,” said Barnes, but it sounded like generalised denial rather than that he’d actually heard Clint. He reached out and gently touched Clint again, cupping his hand around the wound like Clint had seen Sam and Steve do hundreds of times to each other. The soft golden glow appeared again, seeping between Barnes’s fingers, and they both just stared for several minutes.

“It’s healing,” said Clint softly, because he could feel his skin and flesh knitting back together.

Barnes didn’t say anything. After another few minutes the glow faded away, and then he dropped his hand and picked the flashlight up again, darting it across Clint’s arm with less care than he had before.

The wound was completely healed. Underneath the mess of drying blood, Clint could see nothing but whole skin.

“There was no chime,” said Barnes in a hoarse voice. “When we first met. You shook my hand in the kitchen of the tower, and there was no chime, nothing. I’d have noticed.”

Clint let out a long breath, still staring down at his uninjured arm, then looked at Barnes. In the light of flashlight, he could see the same bonedeep shock he was feeling reflected back at him.

“That wasn’t the first time we met,” he said, reluctantly.

Barnes’s eyes darted up from Clint’s arm to his face. “What?”

Clint rubbed a hand over his face, then gave in to the inevitable. “About six years ago, I was part of a team sent to infiltrate a terrorist base in the Afghan mountains and bring back some intel. It was a shitshow. We got made almost immediately, and the team defending the base included the Winter Soldier. I guess it was a Hydra base, although none of the intel ever said that. It was a full-on firefight, then a couple of helicopters turned up just as I actually engaged with you. My hearing aids weren’t so good back then, I couldn’t hear much of anything. You beat me up for a bit, then someone yelled something and you ran off, jumped on one of the helicopters, and they all evacuated. The base blew up not long after that.” He gave a helpless shrug, because he could see that the blank mask Barnes had been hiding behind was cracking into horror.

“I don’t remember that,” he said, sounding sick, and that was exactly why Clint had never said anything. Even when he’d just got more pissed with the guy every time he saw him, he hadn’t been about to throw something he’d done while brainwashed in his face. “If I’d heard a chime back then, I wouldn’t have known what it was. I’d have ignored it as irrelevant to the mission.”

He took a deep breath, but Clint could hear it shuddering in his chest. “Fuck. No wonder you hate me.”

“No,” said Clint immediately, reaching out and grabbing for Barnes’s wrist. “No, listen, that wasn’t you. I swear to god, all my bullshit has been for petty reasons because I felt like you were taking my place, I was all prepared to like you when we first met. I wouldn’t ever hold anything against anyone that they didn’t have a choice over doing.” Barnes’s arm was warm under his hand and Clint found himself clinging tighter. “I could tell you didn’t remember, and I didn’t see any point in reminding you.”

Barnes let out a deep breath, looking down at Clint’s hand. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Thank you.”

“I didn’t figure it might have been when I first met my soulmate,” added Clint, and he couldn’t keep it from coming out as an awed whisper, because it was just starting to sink in. Barnes was his _soulmate_. He didn’t just finally have one, but apparently he’d had one for years. Six years of having a soulmate, and when he’d finally met him again, he’d just spent months being a dick to him.

“Shit, I’m so sorry,” he said. “If I hadn’t been such an asshole, we might have worked this out earlier.”

“No,” said Barnes, wrapping his hand around where Clint was still holding his wrist. Clint could feel the weird not-quite-skin texture of the camouflage sleeve and the hardness of the metal underneath it. “I don’t know that we would have, it’s not like I usually go around touching other people’s injuries. Besides, what’s happened has happened. If I’m not allowed to blame myself for being brainwashed, you’re not allowed to blame yourself for not knowing. We know now, that’s what’s important.” He hesitated, and then added, “Right?” in an insecure tone Clint never wanted to hear from him again.

“Yeah,” he said, squeezing Barnes’s wrist. “I’m gonna make it up to you when we get home, I swear. Stop being a dick, actually hang out together, whatever you want.”

Barnes snorted a laugh that still sounded more blown-away than humorous. “I want to get out of these woods and home without you getting shot again.”

“I can do that,” said Clint, hoping like hell that he could.

****

They stayed crouched in the bush for a bit longer, then took a risk getting out and starting for the base again. Or where they’d decided the base probably was after a furious, whispered argument followed by a reluctant compromise. They needed to have got as far away from the Hydra cabins as possible by the time the sun came up and they lost the cover of darkness.

They moved at a fast pace, one that Clint was well able to keep up with now that his arm was fine.

Because Barnes had healed it, because he was Clint’s soulmate. His actual fucking soulmate.

Shit, Natasha was going to laugh at him so hard.

And Steve was…

Clint tried to imagine how Steve was going to react, and drew a blank. For some reason, all he could think about was the faintly disappointed expression he used whenever Tony came home with some big extravagant new purchase that he’d clearly bought on a whim. He had a feeling he wasn’t the kind of person that Steve pictured as the soulmate of his best buddy.

Would they have to go on double dates with Steve and Sam?

Shit, would they go on dates?

Clint hadn’t quite got as far as realising that being soulmates meant they’d be in some sort of relationship, with all that went with that.

He’d almost certainly get to sleep with Barnes’s arms around him again at some point.

A tree suddenly appeared right in front of him and Clint had to skip to the side to avoid walking into it. Shit, okay, he should think about this stuff later and concentrate on getting to safety right now.

Barnes fell back a step, next to Clint. “Okay?” he asked quietly.

“Yep,” lied Clint, like he wasn’t freaking out on multiple levels.

“Really?” asked Barnes. “Cuz I’m kinda freaking out.”

Clint snorted a laugh. “Yeah, okay, me too,” he agreed. “I just...I can’t believe we didn’t know earlier. I spent three weeks benched with my ankle when you coulda just…” He waved his hand vaguely to symbolise soulmate healing.

“I’m gonna be spending a lot of time healing you,” said Barnes, as if just realising it for the first time. 

Clint shrugged. “We can’t all be super-soldiers with super-special super-healing powers.”

“It’s not _super_ -healing,” muttered Barnes, but Clint ignored him.

“Shit, I just realised you’re going to have to put up with my shitty sleep habits,” said Clint. “I’m so sorry, man.”

Barnes glanced at him, although Clint couldn’t see his expression in the dark. “You realise that they’ve probably been shitty for the last six years because you had a soulmate you didn’t know about, who spent most of his time in different timezones? Not to mention at least a couple of those years cryogenically frozen?”

Clint considered that. “Shit,” he said. “That’s a good point. These are _your_ shitty sleep habits. No wonder I kept waking up when you went on watch.”

A light flashed off to their left and they both froze, then moved to put a tree between themselves and the light. Clint crouched down but Barnes stayed where he was, staring out into the darkness.

“It’s Tanzer,” he said, so softly that Clint’s aids almost didn’t pick it up.

Clint scowled. He really wished he had a gun on him so he could shoot the asshole.

No, a gun would give them away. A bow, what he really wanted was a bow. Fuck, it had been weeks and weeks since he’d held one, his fingers itched just thinking about it.

They stayed frozen in place until the light had moved away, then started walking again in silence. The darkness of the forest around them felt sinister, as if it could be hiding Hydra agents behind every tree and bush. Clint hated it.

It wasn’t as cold as it could be, but Clint could have done with another layer on between his jacket and t-shirt. Only the fact that they were keeping up a fast pace was stopping him from getting cold enough to start whining about it.

They kept going through the woods for another half hour, then Barnes slowed his pace, holding up a hand.

“Isn’t this where we set the ambush?” he asked quietly, and Clint looked around, then shrugged.

“It could be,” he said. “It’s too dark for me to tell.”

Barnes shook his head, looking around again. “That’s the tree you were behind,” he said, gesturing. “You were posed like you were holding a bow, because you’re ridiculous.”

“I really miss my bow,” said Clint, looking at the tree and trying to tell it apart from any other tree in this fucking forest. Barnes must have been paying a lot of attention to him to recognise it again.

The thought sent a warm glow through him that seeped into the turmoil that was still churning from the whole _we’re fucking soulmates_ thing, and he cleared his throat. “If you’re right, then we should be back at the camp in a couple of hours.”

Barnes nodded, glancing up at the sky. “Around dawn,” he said. “Hopefully we can sneak to the car and get the fuck out of here without anyone noticing.”

“That would be the dream,” agreed Clint. “Fuck, you know what’s gonna be great? Having a shower in one of Starks’ ridiculous power-showers.”

“Shit, yeah,” said Barnes as they started moving again. “That, and getting this fucking sleeve off my arm.”

Clint glanced over at him, but it was too dark to take in much more than his silhouette. “Is it uncomfortable?”

Barnes huffed out an irritated noise, rolling his left shoulder back. “Not really,” he said. “Well, maybe. It’s meant to transmit sensations through to the sensors in my arm, but it’s not perfect. Kinda feels like I’ve spent weeks with a thin layer of numbing gel over my skin.”

“That sounds shit,” said Clint. “Do you want to take it off now? It’s not like we need to maintain our cover any longer.”

Barnes was silent for a few more steps, then stopped dead. “You know what, I really fucking do,” he said, and started stripping off his combat jacket.

Okay, maybe Clint hadn’t entirely thought this through. Barnes tossed his jacket at Clint once it was off, then stripped his t-shirt off over his head and, okay, it was dark, and Clint had seen him getting changed every day for weeks, but somehow it was different now he knew he was his soulmate. Those were his soulmate’s abs, weakly outlined in the moonlight. His soulmate’s shoulders curving with muscle as Barnes chucked the t-shirt at Clint as well.

He caught it and it was warm from his body heat. Barnes had been so warm when they’d been cuddled up in the tent, was he always like that?

What would it be like to sleep every night with someone who ran that hot? Was Clint going to get a chance at that, at having his own live-in heated blanket, or were they going to keep this thing platonic? Some soulmates did, after all.

Fuck, he really didn’t want to. 

Barnes pulled at the sleeve, unrolling it from where it was blended with the skin of his shoulder. He made a frustrated noise as he yanked at it. “So fucking tight,” he muttered.

“Let me,” said Clint, stepping closer and shoving Barnes’s clothes at him. “Took enough getting it on, I imagine getting it off is even harder.”

“Right,” agreed Barnes, taking the clothes and turning so Clint had better access to his arm.

And that was an even bigger mistake, because now Clint was touching his shoulder, feeling the way his warm skin became hard metal. Shit, when he’d done this at the start of the mission he’d been so caught up in hating Barnes that he hadn’t taken the time to notice the way it curved around just like a proper shoulder muscle would, or how delicately the plates fitted together.

Was it weird to find a robot arm hot as hell?

Probably, but Clint guessed it wasn’t the weirdest thing he’d ever found hot.

Peeling the sleeve down was tricky even with two hands and full access to it. It clung tightly enough to need to be rolled off and any time Barnes shifted, even slightly, the realignment of the plates made it catch and need to be tugged at.

“Fucking thing,” Clint muttered as he tried to manipulate it around his elbow. “Seriously, how could Stark not do better than this?”

He crouched down to try and see clearer in the dark what he was doing, then gave in and pulled out his flashlight. 

“Those fucking assholes are all miles away, right?” he said as he flicked it on.

“I hope so,” said Barnes. “Not really sure I wanna get caught shirtless while you rip my skin off.” 

Clint snorted and angled his body so the light was mostly trapped between his and Barnes’s bodies, which meant stepping even closer to him.

Shit, he could smell Barnes when he was this close, earthy and a little bit sweaty. He kinda wanted to bury his face into the crook of his shoulder to take a deep breath in, but he forced himself to focus on the task at hand.

The sleeve had somehow got caught between two plates, and wasn’t coming loose. “Hey, can you-?” asked Clint, and then just moved Barnes’s arm for him, until the plates came apart just enough to tug it free. It was only after he’d done it that Clint realised how intimate this whole thing was. He took his eyes off the sleeve for long enough to glance at Barnes’s face, and then got stuck staring at the dark look in his eyes, vaguely lit by the flashlight in Clint’s hand.

“Sorry, let me know if I’m getting too handsy,” he said, through a dry mouth.

Barnes cleared his throat. “You’re not,” he said. “It’s fine.”

“Cool,” said Clint, but even he could tell that it came out a bit weak. He cleared his throat and turned his attention back to Barnes’s arm. Once the sleeve was over the tricky angle of his elbow, it became much easier, and Clint was able to roll it down to his wrist, then gently work it off over his fingers.

When he finally pulled it free, Barnes took a long breath, flexing his whole arm so the plates all shifted, then stretching it out to the side, wiggling his fingers. “Fuck, that feels so much better.”

His stretch made his muscles flex in a way that the dim light of Clint’s flashlight really highlighted. 

“Good,” said Clint, focusing his attention on attempting to fold up the arm sleeve thing in the hope it would be less creepy. It was not.

Barnes took it off him, his hand grazing against Clint’s, and he pulled in a short breath. “Man, that really does feel better without the sleeve in the way,” he said, then ran his fingers over the back of Clint’s hand, cold metal making Clint shiver.

Well, maybe it wasn’t just the metal. Standing so close together in the dark of the wood, nothing but silence and moonlight around them, was far more intimate than Clint would have expected. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Barnes’s face, caught on the way he was staring back at Clint with an intent look.

An eternity passed, in which Clint felt like he should be looking away but couldn’t bring himself to.

“Am I going to making shit really fucking awkward if I kiss you right now?” asked Barnes in a voice that was barely more than a murmur.

“Think it’s going to be more awkward if you don’t,” said Clint, swaying in close and dipping his head so that all Barnes had to do was move a fraction of an inch to press their lips together.

It felt tentative for about half a second, then Clint pressed in closer, putting his hand on Barnes’s shoulder, and in a split-second it turned heated and passionate, all the pent-up frustration of the last few weeks coming out in the movement of their tongues together.

Barnes moved in closer and Clint found himself really appreciating that he was still shirtless as he ran his hands down over his back to his waist. God, that was his _soulmate_ he was kissing, Bucky fucking Barnes, and apparently it wasn’t going to be platonic at all.

“Oh shit, Clint,” said Barnes and as weird as it was to hear his first name from Barnes, it did feel like maybe it was time to move on to first names. 

Clint kissed him again, pulling him in tighter with an arm around his waist. “Bucky,” he tried out, and found he liked it.

“Why the fuck didn’t we realise this earlier, when we weren’t in the middle of the woods being chased by Hydra?” asked Bucky, pulling away to rest his forehead against Clint’s.

“Yeah, that’s maybe something you’re gonna have to learn to put up with about me,” said Clint, pressing another kiss to Bucky’s lips then stepping back and glancing around at the woods to make sure everything was still quiet. “I have the worst fucking timing.”

“We need to get back to the tower,” said Bucky, pulling his shirt back on. “Tell Steve we need some post-mission downtime.”

“Definitely,” Clint agreed as Bucky put his jacket back on and shoved the sleeve thing in his pocket. Clint wasn’t sad to see it go out of sight. “The sooner the better.”

He turned out his flashlight and tucked it away, which meant he couldn’t see Bucky’s face any more, but he could hear the amusement in his voice as he said, “You realise we’ll have to debrief first, right?”

Clint just groaned. Fucking SHIELD, always getting in the way of the important things in life.

****

It took another couple of hours to get back to the base, by which time dawn was tingeing the sky pink in the east and there was enough light that they could see the buildings clearly. They’d emerged from the woods behind a set of barracks belonging to one of the other training battalions.

“Car park’s that way,” said Clint, gesturing along the perimeter of the base. Bucky nodded and they started to make their way around.

They didn’t get very far at all.

“Stop right there, soldiers! What the hell are you doing back here?”

Clint turned to see Sergeant Randolph coming out of the bushes, holding a rifle.

Shit.

“Morning, Sergeant,” he said, stalling for time while his brain rapidly whirled. “Jameson got sick, so Sergeant Steiger sent us back to camp so I could take him to the med unit.”

“Right,” said Randolph, lifting his rifle to aim at them. “Except there doesn’t look like there’s jack shit wrong with Jameson.”

Bucky made a weak attempt at a cough. Randolph ignored him.

“Plus Steiger and Curtis sent a call out that you two had caused some kinda commotion and then run off into the woods. I think you’d better come with me until we can get this sorted out.”

Yeah, there was no way in hell Clint was going to let himself be marched off right now. Once Randolph had him and Bucky locked up where Hydra could get at them, he could pretty much guarantee that they’d conveniently disappear, and they’d definitely lose the intel they’d worked so hard for.

He glanced over at Bucky, who gave him a little shrug back then set his jaw as he turned back to glare at Randolph. He looked like he was already thinking about just how to take him out, which Clint had a feeling would end with someone getting shot and cause an even bigger mess.

They didn’t know that Randolph was Hydra. In fact, given Steiger and Curtis both were, and Clint didn’t want to think that Hydra had the resources to replace all the sergeants here with their men, it seemed pretty likely that he wasn’t. He’d always seemed a bit nicer than the others anyway, although that might just have been that he was quieter.

“Okay,” said Clint, spreading his hands. “Cards on the table, then. We’re part of an undercover mission to investigate rumours that there’s a Hydra presence at this base. Steiger and Curtis are agents working against the American government. We need to report in to our handlers as soon as possible and shut down everything that’s happening here.”

“No, you don’t,” said Randolph, sliding the safety off his rifle. “You need to fuck off and leave us alone. Hail Hydra!”

Before he could fire, there was a strangled gasp from near the barracks building. They all turned to see a recruit who must have been on watch standing there, taking in the scene in front of him. Clint was just realising that it was _Havelka_ of all people, when his face took on a determined expression, he raised his rifle and shot. 

Randolph let out a cry, falling to his knees, but like a lot of people who were new to shooting to kill, Havelka had shot too low and only hit his thigh. Blood started to spread out but Randolph was still able to raise his gun, pointing it at Havelka.

“No!” shouted Bucky, and threw himself between the two of them, just in time to catch the bullet meant for Havelka with a pained grunt. Clint’s heart gave a horrible lurch but he didn’t, couldn’t rush straight to Bucky’s side. Not until the threat was neutralised.

He sprinted at Randolph and knocked him out with a hard punch, then grabbed his gun and threw it out of reach. Only then did he look over to see that Bucky had sunk to his knees and was holding tightly to the side of his chest as blood soaked through his jacket.

“Bucky?” he asked.

“Doing fine,” said Bucky, swaying slightly in blatant disregard of his words. Clint’s chest felt like it was going to break open with the pain of seeing him hurt like that.

He glanced back at Randolph, making sure he wasn’t going to be a threat before he got distracted by his soulmate. The bullet wound in his thigh looked to have missed any arteries, but it was still bleeding more than was probably good, if they wanted to bring him to justice.

“Havelka!” snapped Clint as he scrambled to his feet to get to Bucky. Havelka was just standing and staring at the scene, clearly freaking out. Just because that was probably justified didn’t mean they had time for it. “We’ve got two casualties, I need you to stop that asshole bleeding out.”

Havelka let out a long breath, then started moving, running over to Randolph. Clint left him to it, rushing to Bucky’s side.

“Oh shit, this is a mess,” he said, looping his arm around Bucky’s back, then gently pushing him to lie down on the ground. “What the fuck were you thinking, Bucky?”

Bucky let out a long sigh, squeezing his eyes shut. “No collateral damage,” he muttered. “No one else innocent getting hurt on my watch.”

Aw, man.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Clint told him, then carefully pressed both his hands over Bucky’s wound. For a heart-stopping moment he was afraid it wasn’t going to do anything, and that somehow their bond only worked one way and he’d have to watch his soulmate bleed out after only knowing who he was for one night, but then the glow of gold formed around his hands. He let out a sigh of relief that might have come out more like a sob. “You’re fucking lucky we worked this out,” he said. “Or, well, I am. Can you imagine if I got Steve’s best friend shot on his first mission?”

“I’da been fine,” said Bucky. “You think I’d let myself get taken out by a nobody Hydra agent after all the shit I’ve been through?”

He was staring at the place where Clint’s hands were resting and Clint remembered the weird feeling of being healed like this. “It’s going to take a few minutes,” he warned him. “This is a bad one.”

Bucky gave a vague shrug, then glanced up at Clint’s face with a smirk. “Worth it to get your hands on me, darlin’,” he said, playing up the Brooklyn drawl. 

Clint couldn’t keep himself from laughing, letting out all the relief he was feeling. Without moving his hands, he carefully leaned in and pressed a kiss to Bucky’s lips, which earned him a smile.

“What the absolute fucking fuck is fucking going on here?” asked a voice and Clint glanced around to see that a sergeant had emerged from between the barracks buildings and was staring at the scene with horror.

“Sergeant Vang!” exclaimed Havelka. He was crouched at Randolph’s side, putting pressure on his wound.

“Oh god, please tell me you’re not Hydra,” said Clint, because he was entirely done with this whole thing now.

The sergeant just glared at him. “What the fuck did you say to me, soldier? I’m a proud member of the United States fucking Army, not a scum-sucking terrorist fuckhole! You need to fucking explain yourself!”

“There’s a major Hydra infiltration at this base,” said Clint, deciding to take him at his word. He was too tired to try and play games right now. If the guy was Hydra, he was pretty sure they’d find out pretty quickly. “That guy’s part of it,” he said, nodding over at Randolph, who was starting to come around but still looked pretty out of it. “You’ll want to get him under lock and key as soon as possible.”

“He’ll need a guard we’re completely certain isn’t Hydra,” said Bucky, sitting up now that his wound was mostly healed. “They’ll try and kill him to stop him talking.”

Clint ran through the options of people on site who they 100% knew wasn’t Hydra, and only really came up with one. He and Bucky were going to have to report in, and probably do a hell of a lot of explaining until SHIELD arrived, they wouldn’t have time to do any babysitting. Which left...

“Havelka, stay with him,” he said, and Havelka gave him a wide-eyed look. “Don’t let anyone separate you from him.”

“Yes, sir,” said Havelka with a nod. “He’s going to need sutures. I’ve managed to stop the bleeding but it’s a messy wound.”

“Shitting hell,” said Sergeant Vang. “Why does this kind of fucking wankstain bullshit always happen to me?” He fixed them all with a fierce glare. “No one move.” He disappeared back into the barracks, and Clint could hear him shouting at the recruits in there, sending them off to get medical help, the military police, and the camp commander.

There was a soft touch to Clint’s hands and he looked down to see Bucky’s fingers stroking over them. The golden glow had faded away.

“I’m all fixed up,” said Bucky, quietly. “Thanks.”

Clint gave him a grin that probably came out a bit crooked. “I’d say any time, but I really don’t want to have to do this very often.”

“Don’t give me that when we both know it’s gonna be the other way around far more often,” said Bucky, then leaned in and kissed him. Clint was really enjoying that that was apparently just a thing they did now.

“You guys didn’t say you were soulmates,” said Havelka. “Aren’t you meant to disclose that kinda thing?”

“Yeah, we actually lied about a lot of shit on our recruitment forms,” said Clint, making himself pull away from Bucky to check on how Havelka was doing with Randolph. “I’m also not a Virgo.”

Havelka had done a surprisingly proficient job keeping Randolph alive. Given the extremely basic nature of the first aid they’d been taught during training, and Havelka’s general air of incompetence, Clint had kinda expected to have to make some suggestions, but he wasn’t sure he’d have done better on his own. And he’d dealt with tons of bullet wounds, not all of them his own.

“That’s a good job,” Clint said, and then winced at how surprised he sounded. Randolph had opened his eyes and was glaring up at them but not making any move to do more than that, so Clint gave him a shit-eating grin. 

“Thanks,” said Havelka, apparently not offended. “I’m aiming to be picked for medic training, so I did some courses before we started.” He gave Clint a weak smile, then shrugged. “If I even make it through basic.”

“You will,” said Clint. “I’m so sorry about all that shit before, we were complete assholes. We needed to get an in with even bigger assholes but I’m so sorry that we fucked you over to do so. We should have been supporting you.”

Havelka shook his head. “Nah, I get it,” he said. “I wasn’t keeping up. I’m doing much better in my new unit, I guess I just needed a bit more time.” He looked back down at Randolph’s wound. “I’m gonna kick ass at the medic training, though,” he said fiercely. “I’m gonna be _good_ at that.”

“Yeah, I really think you are,” said Clint, and Havelka gave him a sunny grin, just like the ones he’d had every morning before Clint and Bucky had started bullying him.

“All right, who the fuck are you guys and what the fuck are you doing in my camp,” said a voice, and Clint glanced over to see Vang coming back with a whole crowd of people. A couple of medics with a gurney who took over from Havelka, a couple of confused-looking MPs, and a guy who must have been the camp commander in his pyjamas, who looked very pissed off.

“I’m Sergeant Barnes,” said Bucky, straightening his stance. “This is my partner, Agent Barton. I’m afraid your base is harbouring a Hydra unit amongst its personnel.”

“We need to speak to SHIELD,” said Clint. “They’ll probably bring a team here to arrest a few people, but you should lock the camp down until then.”

“Don’t you tell me what to do, son,” said the commander with a glare. “If the Army has a problem, the Army will deal with it on our own. We’ve got our own police, we don’t need fucking SHIELD sticking their noses in.”

The medics were wheeling Randolph away and Havelka was walking right next to them. Clint caught his eye and Havelka gave him a nod, reaching out to touch the gurney as if to say that he was staying right there, making sure nothing happened to the asshole.

“Except you have no idea who in the Military Police is an undercover Hydra agent,” said Bucky. “You need a clean sweep from an external agency.”

The commander scowled at him and Clint let out a sigh. “Look, arguing over jurisdiction isn’t our job. How about we call our superiors and you can talk it out with them?”

Because once this guy was talking to Coulson, he’d find himself doing exactly what SHIELD wanted him to do.

“Sure, I don’t mind telling them to butt out,” said the commander. “Come on, you can tell me exactly what the fuck has been going on on the way over to my office.”


	6. Chapter 6

Within two hours, the whole base was crawling with SHIELD agents going through the list Bucky and Clint had stolen from Hydra and arresting anyone on it. The camp commander was locked up in his office with Coulson while Clint and Bucky just hung around in the corridor outside, slumped into a couple of chairs. Someone had found them new jackets, which was a relief given how much blood they’d both been covered in.

“We should be able to go now, right?” said Clint. “Our job’s over, we get to go home?”

“You’d think,” agreed Bucky. He’d spread his legs slightly, just wide enough for his knee to press against Clint’s. Clint couldn’t help pressing back. “You know there’s always far more post-mission bullshit to get through than you want.”

Clint let out a long sigh, tipping his head back to rest against the wall. “I just want to have a proper fucking shower and then sleep for, like, a million years.”

Bucky nodded, looking just as tired as Clint felt. After a moment, his hand gently rested on Clint’s knee. It felt tentative in a way that Clint didn’t want his soulmate to ever have to feel with him, so he put his hand over it and gave a squeeze. The soft smile Bucky gave him in return made a flow of warmth spread down Clint’s chest.

Now that they knew they were soulmates, they were falling into all this so easily. What was it going to be like after even just a week back home, without having to worry about a mission?

Clint was beginning to think he might get his snuggle on the sofa after all.

And maybe even some fucking.

“You know, we probably wouldn’t get yelled at too much if we just snuck off now,” said Clint, musingly. “Or, at least, not more than I usually get yelled at.”

Bucky snorted. “Yeah, but then we’d miss getting to see the look on Steiger’s face when he gets back to camp and immediately gets arrested.”

The camp had put a call out for all battalions on field exercises to come back to base, claiming that there was bad weather heading in. Clint and Bucky’s old battalion wasn’t back yet but they wouldn’t be too much longer, as they’d already been on their way back.

“Yeah, that’s true,” said Clint, glancing up at the time. “Do you want to go and see it in person?”

Bucky grinned at him. “That is a great plan.”

The main route back into the camp from the area used for field exercises had been purposefully left clear of any sign that anything unusual was going on. The idea was to let the incoming units march back to their barracks, and then circle them and make the arrests.

Clint and Bucky casually posed themselves leaning against the wall of what had been their barracks. They heard the battalion coming before they saw them, mis-matched footsteps as the recruits trudged down the path. The sergeants clearly hadn’t bothered forming them up to come back.

The first few guys were from other platoons and just headed straight into the barracks, clearly desperate to get to a decent toilet and a sink, even if they weren’t going to have time to shower just yet. Clint and Bucky ignored them and just focused on looking properly smug when their own unit came around the corner.

Steiger came around first, marching alongside Albini. He stopped dead in place when he saw Clint and Bucky, staring at them, and Clint gave him a grin and a wave.

“Hey, guess we made it back first. Do we get a prize?”

“You get the fucking grand prize of explaining yourselves to a disciplinary commitee,” said Albini. Clint had been kinda surprised to find out he wasn’t Hydra agent. Apparently being a shouty fucker didn’t necessarily mean you were evil. “Where the fuck have you been?”

Steiger was still just staring, and Everill and Tanzer had paused next to him, glancing between Steiger and Albini, clearly trying to work out what they were meant to do. Clint wondered how much of the night they’d spent tramping about the woods trying to find them. They both looked like shit.

“Sorry, as fun as it was to play war games with you guys, we had to go do our actual jobs,” said Clint. “Speaking of, Steiger, you’re under arrest. I wouldn’t bother running, the whole place is surrounded by SHIELD.”

Of course Steiger tried to run, but he got less than a couple of feet before Bucky grabbed his arm and pulled him into an armlock. Clint was just very grateful he hadn’t had to move. He was way too tired for chasing down Hydra agents right now.

“You fucking assholes!” snapped Steiger, struggling uselessly in Bucky’s grip. “Let go of me!”

“Not a chance,” said Bucky, wrenching tighter at his arm. He had a self-satisfied smirk on his face and Clint thought that giving him the chance to arrest at least one Hydra agent himself was probably good for his mental health. Cathartic, or whatever.

“Who the fuck are you guys?” asked Tanzer. “What the fuck is going on?”

“I’ll ask the questions, soldier,” said Albini, then glared at Bucky. “Who the fuck are you and what the fuck is going on?”

“I’m Sergeant Barnes, this is Agent Barton, and there’s a massive Hydra conspiracy at this base, which we just prevented those two from being roped into,” said Bucky, nodding at Tanzer and Everill. “You’re fucking welcome.”

Clint decided that one of the very few things that he liked about being in the Army was just how much swearing went on. He really could respect it.

“What?” asked Everill, eyes going wide. “Wait, that shit you said last night about things being a bit facist was right?”

“Yup,” said Clint, watching as a trio of SHIELD agents came over to take Steiger off Bucky’s hands, trying not to look too obviously put out that they’d missed out on getting to arrest him. “Shockingly the guys talking about creating a new version of society by grinding the weak into the dust were secret Nazis. Who saw that coming?”

“Well, I fucking didn’t,” said Albini, watching Steiger get marched off, followed by Curtis who had been picked up as well. “It’s my fucking battalion, shouldn’t I know this shit?”

Bucky shrugged. “You know it now. And I’m pretty sure the camp commander is having a worst day of it, because he’s got moles in every fucking unit, and had no idea.”

Albini perked up. “Well, at least there’s that.” He turned to glare at Tanzer and Everill. “All right, assholes, get to your barracks, unpack your shit, and then I guess we’ll be having a special parade to talk about how to avoid accidentally being neo-Nazi terrorists.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” they both parroted and dashed off and, wow, Clint was not going to miss having to jump like that whenever he was given an order.

Albini eyed him and Bucky. “I’m guessing you’re not joining us for that.”

“Nope,” said Clint. “I think I’m done being yelled at. Besides, turns out we lied about our soulmate status when we joined the United States Army, so I guess that’s an instant discharge.”

He reached out and took Bucky’s hand, and then couldn’t hold in a grin because _he had a fucking soulmate_.

Albini gave them an irritated look. “Well, thanks for coming by and fucking everything up then,” he said. “Please feel fucking free to never do it again. Now get the fuck out of my camp.” And with that, he strode off to find someone else to shout at.

Bucky squeezed Clint’s hand and said, “If these fuckers try to give me a dishonourable discharge after all the shit I went through because of being part of this Army, I’m gonna set Steve on them.”

“Nah,” said Clint, swinging their hands together as they started to head back towards where Coulson was probably still locked up with the camp commander. “Coulson will get that all sorted so Clifton and Jameson just quietly disappear from the records.”

“That’s a fucking relief,” said Bucky.

“You realise you’re probably going to have to tone down the swearing a bit before we get back, right?” said Clint. “Or Steve’ll give you one of his little talks about appropriate language.”

“Fuck Steve,” said Bucky, with satisfaction.

Clint laughed, then couldn’t stop himself from adding, “I’d rather you fuck me.”

Bucky sent him a sudden, startled look, then put his eyes front again. Clint winced, thinking that maybe he needed to tone things down a bit, when Bucky cleared his throat and said, “I’m pretty sure that could be arranged.”

Oh shit. Clint really, really wanted to be at the tower now. In fact…

“Fuck Coulson, let’s go steal a quinjet,” he said, pulling Bucky around in the direction of where SHIELD had parked their quinjets. Bucky hesitated and Clint turned to raise an eyebrow at him. “Seven hours in that car again, or less than an hour in a quinjet,” he pointed out.

“You make a good point,” said Bucky, “but this is still my probation mission, I shouldn’t be stealing agency vehicles just yet.”

“Just tell them it was my fault,” said Clint cheerfully, starting walking again and tugging Bucky after him. “They’ll completely believe it.”

“Because it will be true,” said Bucky, but he caught up and walked with Clint without any further objections.

A thought occurred to Clint and he glanced at Bucky. “Hey, you’ve introduced yourself twice now as Sergeant Barnes. You realise that’s not right, don’t you?”

Bucky’s shoulders tensed. “Once a sergeant, always a sergeant,” he said stiffly.

“Oh sure,” said Clint, “but you’re now also an agent of SHIELD, or you will be once we get back and the paperwork gets sorted. You should be calling yourself Agent Barnes while you’re on a SHIELD mission.”

Bucky frowned slightly and didn’t say anything, so Clint let him think about that for a bit. 

When they got to the handful of quinjets parked on an empty field, Clint was disappointed to see that SHIELD had thought ahead and left an agent behind to keep an eye on them. An agent Clint didn’t recognise, and so didn’t know how best to manipulate into letting them just take one.

“Can I help you?” the agent asked, straightening up and staring at their Army uniforms with a level of distaste.

“I’m Agent Barnes and this is Agent Barton,” said Bucky firmly. “We’re requisitioning a quinjet.”

Which was great, and good for the guy for claiming the title he’d earned, but Clint really should have told him that the best way to con a SHIELD agent into letting them get away with shit was to pull the Avengers card, not the SHIELD one.

“I don’t have any orders about letting any jets go,” said the agent, uncertainly.

“Yeah, probably not,” agred Clint. “It’s a bit last-minute. We need to get back to Avengers Tower to speak to Captain America.” He gave the guy a conspiratorial grin. “He’s a stickler for prompt check-ins from his team, you know?”

“Ah,” said the agent, then his eye riveted on Bucky’s hand, which he’d chosen that moment to casually flex, letting the sunlight reflect off the metal plates. Okay, maybe Clint didn’t have so much to teach him about how this worked. “Yes, of course, of course, go ahead,” said the agent, gesturing at the nearest quinjet.

“Awesome, thanks dude,” said Clint with a grin. Name-dropping Cap worked every time.

****

Even with the speed a quinjet flew, Clint was exhausted by the time they got back to the tower. He was tired and smeared with mud from tramping through the woods all night, still kinda bloodstained from being shot, and just generally worn out from weeks upon weeks of jumping to someone else’s tune. Plus his emotions were still kinda all over the place from finding out Bucky was his soulmate, and everything that had gone with it. He was ready to sleep for about a thousand years.

Which was why opening the door from the quinjet pad to find Tony and Steve in the sitting room made him just want to start crying. He did not have the energy to deal with any of his team right now, but especially not Tony Stark.

“Oh my god,” said Tony, setting down his coffee cup and staring at them like they were the second coming. “Holy shit. I mean, I knew it was going to be good, but I never dared dream it would be this good.”

“What?” Bucky growled at him, which made Clint think he was just as ready to be alone somewhere he could lie down and pass out.

“Your _hair_ ,” said Tony, with delight. “Shit, Clint, you look like you should be buying a tiki torch right now. And Barnes, wow, the sheer amount of your face I’m now able to see, fuck, I gotta say, I’m blown away.”

“Okay, fuck off,” said Clint. “We were running from Hydra all night, we’re not in the mood for this shit.”

“Are you in the mood for me to talk about the call I had from Coulson about you guys stealing a quinjet?” asked Steve.

“Nope,” said Bucky. “Fuck off, Steve.”

“Okay then,” said Steve, too easily. They were totally just putting that lecture off for another day. Fuck it, that was future Clint’s problem. “In that case I’ll just pass on his thanks for a job well done. He was really pleased with how the mission went, well done Bucky.”

Bucky must have been tired because his usual tight hold on his emotions failed completely and for a moment he actually fucking glowed at the praise. It was so adorable that Clint wanted to smoosh his cheeks and tell him that of course he’d done a good job, and he should be proud.

“Guess that’s mostly thanks to Clint,” said Bucky with a shrug. “I’da given myself away in the first week without him supporting me.”

Clint wouldn’t exactly have used the word ‘supporting’ for what he’d been like in the first few weeks, but he wasn’t about to point that out in front of Steve. Instead he just let himself enjoy the undeserved warm glow of being praised by his soulmate.

“Thanks, Clint,” said Steve, giving him one of his you-have-pleased-Captain-America smiles. “I knew I could rely on you. You’re always exactly what this team needs you to be, and I knew you’d be able to do the same for Bucky on this mission.”

Oh shit, now it was Clint’s turn to be too tired to cover his emotions. “No worries,” he managed.

Steve beamed at them both. “It’s so great that we’ve now been a team long enough for the guys with more experience to be able to help out the new guys.”

Oh shit, he really wasn’t planning on replacing Clint. No way would he have said that if he had been.

A wave of relief so total that it nearly made Clint’s knees buckle washed over him. He wasn’t losing this. He was still going to be an Avenger.

And he’d be able to be on the same team as his soulmate.

“I’m not that new,” muttered Bucky at the same time as Tony made a choked gagging noise.

“Okay, Jesus, no one told me I was walking into a Hallmark movie,” he said. “What is going on with you this morning Cap?”

“I think he got laid,” said Bucky, eyeing Steve carefully.

Clint and Tony both protested that one, while Steve went faintly pink in a way that proved Bucky right.

“Oh fucking hell, I need to go pass out,” said Clint, rubbing a hand over his face. “I can’t cope with this shit.”

“Yeah, same,” said Bucky. “Come on.”

They left the two of them and headed for the elevator. Clint hit the button for his floor automatically, and Bucky reached out to press for his, then hesitated. 

“Ah,” he said, carefully, then apparently changed his mind about whatever he was going to say, and just hit the button instead.

“Fuck, I’m so tired,” said Clint as the elevator started moving. “But there’s no way in hell I’m going to bed without a shower. I need to wash the Army stank off me.”

“Just gonna remind you again that I was Army,” said Bucky, crossing his arms tightly across his chest.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Clint, waving a hand. “I know, you and Steve rolled around in that stank in the name of patriotism, whatever.”

The elevator opened for his floor and he stepped out, then glanced back at Bucky, realising this would be where they parted. For a strange, light-headed moment he thought about asking Bucky to come with him, but the guy almost certainly just wanted his own shower and bed right now. 

“Uh, guess I’ll see you later?” he said instead.

“Yeah,” said Bucky, looking just as awkward as Clint felt. He moved as if to step forward, then jolted back again.

Clint blinked at him, then put out a hand to stop the elevator doors closing. “I can put up with the Army stank long enough for a kiss, if you want.”

Bucky blinked at him, then stepped forward and pulled him down into a long, slow kiss that seemed to say a lot more than ‘I’ll see you in a couple of hours after a nap’. Clint clung on and kissed him back, just as deeply.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said softly once they’d parted. “We’re back now, it’s all done and dusted. Hydra’s recruitment process is completely fucked.”

Bucky let out a long sigh, then rested his head on Clint’s shoulder for a moment. Clint set his hand on the soft spikes of his shorn hair. “I know,” he muttered into Clint’s shoulder. “I know. We got the bastards.”

He pulled back and looked at Clint, then took a breath and started to say, “Hey, uh-”

But Clint’s brain had already leaped ahead. “Ah shit, we didn’t mention the soulmate thing to the others,” he said. “What’s the betting Steve’ll be pissed we didn’t mention it first thing?”

Bucky cut himself off from what he was saying, then let out a rusty laugh. “Oh, he’ll absolutely be pissed,” he agreed, “but did you really want to deal with his and Stark’s reaction to that right now?”

“Fuck no,” said Clint. “I want to shower and nap and deal with absolutely no drama for at least twelve hours.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Bucky, nodding. “I hear that.” He pressed a last kiss to Clint’s lips, then stepped back into the elevator and gave him a tired smile. “See you later, then.”

****

Taking out his hearing aids after weeks of continuous wear, even with all the advances Tony had made to make it okay not to take them out, was a truly beautiful moment. Clint rubbed at his ears, letting himself relax into the silence of his apartment. God, it was so nice not being surrounded by sounds of a hundred guys living in close proximity.

He had the longest, hottest shower of his life, turning it up to the very highest pressure it could manage and using all the fancy shower gels and shampoos that had been stocked in his bathroom when he moved in, and that he’d never used. It was maybe the greatest thing he’d ever done.

He wrapped himself in an enormous fluffy towel, at least four times the size of the ones they’d had at the training base, and wafted to his bedroom on a cloud of steam and fruity soap scents.

He fell into bed, not bothering to hold back a groan at just how soft the mattress was, and so _large_ holy shit. He spread out like a starfish, relishing in every inch of it. Fuck, he was going to sleep so hard.

And then his lights flashed to tell him someone was at the door.

Clint groaned, and pressed his face harder into the pillow.

The lights flashed again.

“Fuck,” muttered Clint, then forced himself to get up. He didn’t put on any clothes though, just rewrapped the towel around his waist and stomped over to the door.

It was Bucky. He looked just as freshly scrubbed as Clint was and was wearing a soft-looking blue t-shirt and sweatpants that Clint was almost sure were what he slept in. His eyes darted down to Clint’s chest in a way that would make Clint preen as soon as he was awake enough for that.

“Dude,” said Clint in greeting. “I’m not wearing my hearing aids, so speak clearly.”

Bucky hesitated, then said, more carefully than his usual mumble, “Tell me to fuck off if you want, but is there any chance I could sleep with you? Just sleep? I don’t - I got used to hearing your breathing.”

Clint just stared at him for a moment, which made Bucky shift his weight from one foot to another. “It’s weird, right?” he said. “Sorry, I shouldn’t-”

“No,” interrupted Clint, and opened his door wider in invitation. “Come in.”

Because the only thing better than sleeping all alone in a giant bed after a couple of months in a barracks bunk, was sleeping in a giant bed with his soulmate beside him.

Bucky’s face lit up and he came in, wrapping an arm around Clint’s waist and kissing him softly. “Thank you,” he said, then hesitantly signed it as well.

Clint beamed at him, shutting the door. “Come on, I’m not gonna be keeping my eyes open much longer,” he said and led the way to his bedroom.

He did pause long enough to drag on some pyjama pants before collapsing back into bed, because it felt polite not to be butt-ass naked, then joined Bucky curled up under the covers.

“Oh fuck,” he said, relaxing into the mattress again. Bucky reached over to gently set his hand on Clint’s arm, looking tentative but also like he wanted a whole hell of a lot more contact than that.

“Just so you know,” said Clint, rolling over to turn out the light and then settling in with his back to Bucky, “I am completely up for being the little spoon again.”

It was less than a split-second before he felt Bucky’s arm tucking around his waist, pulling him back against Bucky’s chest, and he smiled to himself, then let his eyes fall shut.

He was asleep in seconds.

****

Clint actually couldn’t remember ever sleeping so deeply or so long without waking up at least once. When he did finally blink his eyes open, it felt like he was still wrapped up in the warmth of a dream.

A dream in which he had a soulmate, who was still cuddled up against him with his face pressed into the back of Clint’s neck. Clint let out a quiet sigh, feeling the luxurious lethargy weighing his limbs down, and wondered if just going back to sleep again would be too much.

Bucky shifted his legs slightly and Clint’s slow-moving mind realised that if he was awake, then Bucky was as well, and if he went back to sleep, so would Bucky.

Okay, this soulmate thing was kind of a trip.

There was a vibration against Clint’s neck that he had a feeling was words. “No aids yet,” he murmured back. “Just gimme one squeeze for going back to sleep, and two squeezes for waking up.”

Instead of squeezes, he got a soft kiss to the back of his neck and then, after a hesitation that had Clint’s eyes already sliding shut again, another one.

Clint let out a sigh. “Yeah, okay. You’re probably right.” He made himself move, shifting around so he could see Bucky’s face looking just as half-asleep as Clint felt. Clint couldn’t stop himself from kissing him, and then they got a bit distracted making out for a while, pressed right up against each other and just letting their mouths move together, slow and lazy.

It was maybe the best way to wake up that Clint had ever found, and it didn’t even involve coffee.

He wrapped his arm around Bucky, stroking slowly over his back then down to his waist, and let his fingers graze over the skin in the gap between his shirt and his pants. Bucky gave a little shiver then pulled away from Clint, letting out a sigh.

“This isn’t getting up,” he said clearly.

“Nah, it’s more fun,” said Clint, and leaned in to kiss him again. 

Bucky kept it short then pulled away again, running a hand over Clint’s head before he sat up. Clint rolled onto his back. “There’s no drill sergeants shouting at us, do we really need to get up?”

Bucky said something that Clint didn’t catch. He sighed and gave in to what was happening, sitting up to grab his hearing aids. His favourite purple ones, as he didn’t have to wear the mission ones any more.

“Say again?” he said, turning back to Bucky.

“I’m hungry and it’s nearly dinner time,” said Bucky. “And if I don’t show up, Steve will go looking for me and…” He gestured vaguely at the fact that he was in Clint’s bedroom rather than his own.

Clint nodded. “Okay, yeah,” he said, rubbing at his face. “You want to keep this a secret for now then?”

The thought made him feel a bit sick, but he guessed he couldn’t blame Bucky, not after how Clint had behaved to him. He wouldn’t want to admit to being in a relationship with an asshole like that either.

“No,” said Bucky immediately, and his face made it clear just how serious he was. “No, Clint, not at all. I’m happy for everyone to know that I’ve got you for a soulmate. I just don’t want Steve to find out because he comes chasing me and finds us in bed.”

Clint grinned at him, not bothering to hide his relief. “How do you want him to find out, then?”

Bucky shrugged. “I’d kinda just like him to know without there having to be any drama about it,” he said. “Guess that’s not happening though.”

“Oh yeah, there’s going to be drama,” said Clint. “Have you met this team? There’s always drama. We nearly started a civil war over what kind of milk we should be getting. The real question is, what kind of drama do you want it to be? Because I can’t help thinking that if we went out to the kitchen right now, dressed like this, and just got coffee, that it would be the vaguely hilarious kind of drama. Especially if Tony’s there.”

“Tony is funny when he gets all spluttery,” conceded Bucky. “Okay, fine, let’s do it.” He threw back the blankets and stood up, then grinned at Clint. “And I’ll even pretend I don’t know that the main reason you suggested it is for the coffee.”

“Guilty as charged,” said Clint, getting up as well. “Although I would like to point out that I have a perfectly good coffee machine here as well.”

Bucky gave him a raised eyebrow that said he wasn’t fooled. Well, okay, fair enough. The coffee in the communal kitchen was usually better and, crucially, already on. Clint hadn’t used his machine in two months and he had a horrible feeling he hadn’t remembered to clean it out before he left on the mission.

****

The coffee machine in the main kitchen wasn’t just on, it had a full pot in it. Clint made a beeline straight for it, ignoring the looks that he and Bucky got for turning up together in their pyjamas.

“Want one?” he asked and Bucky gave him a distracted nod, apparently more concerned about the curious stares.

Sam was cooking dinner, which looked like a giant pot of chilli, fuck yeah, Clint loved Sam’s chilli. Steve was sat at the table with a sketchbook and talking to Sam, although he had stopped when Clint and Bucky came in.

Clint poured two mugs of coffee and handed one to Bucky before slumping down in a chair to properly relish his first cup of proper coffee after months of the shit the Army had given them.

“Hey,” he said cheerfully, once he’d had that first, perfect sip of coffee. “Anything exciting happen while we were away?”

“Well, no one ripped my wings off or trashed my car,” said Sam.

Bucky let out a very deep sigh and settled into the chair next to Clint. “You’re never gonna let that go,” he said, with resignation.

“Probably not, no,” said Sam. His eyes darted between Clint and Bucky, taking in their sleep-rumpled and half-dressed states. “What about you guys, anything exciting happen?”

Clint shrugged. “Push-ups, being yelled at, fighting Hydra. Usual shit.”

Sam looked like he wanted to say something else, but Natasha came in and interrupted him.

“Clint,” she said, with a cool nod.

“Nat!” said Clint happily, standing up and temporarily abandoning his coffee so he could sweep her up into a hug that she stoically endured like they didn’t both know that she loved it. “Bestie! Taken down any foreign governments with any stealthy and Machiavellian plots since I’ve been gone?”

“If I have, no one will ever know,” she said, then took a step back to look him over. “Did you get hurt?”

“Nope,” said Clint.

Nat glanced over at Bucky and raised an eyebrow.

“Not really,” said Bucky. “Nothing lasting, anyway.” 

Clint beamed at him for having his back and not mentioning the whole gunshot thing. Natasha always got a bit fussy when Clint got shot.

Natasha nodded then moved to make tea. On the way, she patted her hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “It’s good to have you two back,” she said.

“Aw, I missed you too,” said Clint, returning to his coffee. “Remind me to get some kind of blackmail material on Coulson so next time he tries to send me off on a mission like that I can get out of it.”

Natasha snorted. “You’ve been trying that for years,” she pointed out. “Have you ever once found anything?”

Clint considered. “There was the time he wore a clip-on tie to a formal event.”

“Really?” asked Steve, sitting forward with interest.

“No,” admitted Clint. “But I thought he had.”

Steve rolled his eyes and sat back.

“Has there been any word from SHIELD?” asked Bucky.

“Yeah,” said Steve. “They managed to arrest everyone on the list who was at the camp, and they’re working on those who are in other units, or civilians now. They’re going to take most of them to some kinda camp to try and work out how indoctrinated they are. They don’t have any crimes other than belonging to a terrorist organisation to charge most of them with, and given they got pulled in while on the Army’s watch, they want to try and de-radicalise them rather than just punish them.”

Clint nodded to himself, thinking that Everill and Tanzer would probably be included in that. He didn’t think SHIELD would have much hope of trying to get Tanzer to be a better person, although hopefully he’d learn his lesson on joining terrorist groups. Everill might benefit from having someone who wasn’t a raging bigot try and talk to him about his beliefs, though.

“Did they say anything more about how they thought the mission went?” asked Bucky. “Anything we coulda done better?”

Steve stared at him. “Of course not,” he said. “This was a huge win, Bucky. You and Clint did a great job, and now we’ve got a chance to choke off Hydra’s supply of idiots that we have to punch our way through every time we raid one of their bases. Coulson and Hill are really pleased.”

Bucky went faintly pink and ducked his head, but without his long hair he wasn’t able to hide his expression like he used to. Clint wondered if he was going to react like that every time someone told him he’d done a good job because it was seriously adorable and he could definitely get used to seeing it.

But maybe not having everyone else seeing it. “Pleased enough to let us off debrief?” Clint asked to distract attention from Bucky.

Steve just laughed at him. “It’s scheduled for 8am tomorrow,” he said, with more satisfaction than was really warranted. Clint groaned.

Natasha leaned back against the counter with her mug and smirked at him. “Funny how Coulson started scheduling all your debriefings first thing in the morning after you accused him of wearing a clip-on tie.”

“He hates me,” said Clint, sadly. “After all we’ve been through together.” He pushed back in his chair and then tilted it back until he could put his feet on the table, still cradling his coffee in his hands. Shit, even after sleeping most of the day, he was going to enjoy getting to go to bed tonight.

Especially if Bucky was going to come with him again.

“What’s that?” asked Bucky and Clint followed his gaze to his leg.

He hadn’t bothered putting shoes or socks on and the angle he’d propped his legs up at meant that his pyjamas pants had ridden up, revealing his ankles and some of his shin. Including a large, purpling bruise that he hadn’t really been aware was there.

“It’s a bruise,” he said helpfully. Bucky glowered at him. “Don’t give me that look, we spent hours last night rushing through a forest in the dark. You really think I’m not covered in bruises from walking into shit?”

“You said you weren’t hurt,” said Natasha.

“It’s a bruise!” protested Clint. “I get worse when I walk into the coffee table, come on. It’s not like I got shot.”

Bucky let out a quiet snort at that, then glanced at Clint with a hesitant look and a questioning eyebrow. Clint wasn’t exactly sure what he was asking, but he nodded anyway because he was always going to agree when Bucky looked that in need of reassurance.

Bucky twitched the corner of his mouth in a brief smile back, then reached out and cupped his hand around Clint’s ankle, right over the bruise. The golden light of soulmate healing started to spill out at his touch.

There was a sudden, resounding silence in the room and Clint could feel everyone’s attention riveting on his ankle. He wiggled his toes.

“What the fuck,” said Sam, slowly and with emphasis. Clint glanced up at him and gave him a smug grin.

“Bucky,” said Steve, sounding about two seconds away from bursting into tears. “You found your soulmate?”

“Yeah,” said Bucky, like it was no big deal. The golden light dimmed as the bruise healed, and he pushed Clint’s pants up to his knee, finding another bruise and setting about healing it. 

Natasha was staring at the two of them with a faint frown. “Kabul,” she said, after a moment.

Clint snorted. “Yeah, well done.” He glanced at Steve. “The first time I met Bucky, it was kinda noisy. Lots of gunfire, helicopters, having my ribs broken, that kinda thing. Guess I missed the chime somehow. And Bucky was all...” He gestured at his head to signify the brainwashing.

“I broke your ribs?” asked Bucky, and, shit, there was a reason Clint hadn’t mentioned that before.

“Uh, they got broken,” said Clint. “Coulda happened at any point in the mission, no idea if it was you or not.” The fact that Bucky had rammed his metal fist right into Clint’s ribcage during the fight probably wasn’t related.

Bucky scowled at him, then let go of his leg and gestured at the other one. Clint swapped them over so that Bucky could start on healing the bruises there as well. “You shoulda said,” he muttered.

“Why?” asked Clint. Bucky didn’t seem to have an answer to that.

Steve pushed his chair back with a noisy scrape, strode across the room and pulled Bucky up into a massive hug, wrapping his arms around him and clinging on. “I’m so happy for you,” he said and, wow, he sounded kinda choked up.

Clint glanced away and caught Natasha’s eye.

“I’m not hugging you again,” she said.

Steve hugged Bucky for a good few minutes, muttering something heartfelt into Bucky’s ear and occasionally slapping at his back. Clint started to wonder if he should be getting jealous again, only the opposite way around to how he had been before the mission. 

When Steve let go of Bucky with one last hard back slap, he immediately turned to Clint and pulled him up into a hug as well. It took Clint a moment to catch up, then he wrapped his arms around Steve in return, catching Bucky’s eye over Steve’s shoulder. Bucky just gave him a shrug.

“I’m so pleased for you,” said Steve. “You deserve this.” Oh shit, now Clint was getting choked up. “And I’m so glad it’s you and Bucky, you’re both great guys. You’re gonna be really happy together.”

Clint found himself fighting back tears. Aw, emotions, no. “I hope so,” he said, and Bucky smiled at him, lighting his face up and _Jesus_ , why hadn’t Clint realised how handsome he was before this?

“Okay, do I want to know what the hell is going on?” asked Tony, hesitating in the doorway. He glanced over at Sam. “Flyboy, aren’t you concerned about your soulmate hugging a shirtless dude like that?”

Sam tipped his head to one side as he looked at Steve and Clint. “Nah, I’m good.” He looked back at his pot and added, “Chilli’s done, by the way. Someone lay the table.”

Steve let go of Clint and stepped away as there was a general move to get things ready. He gave him an emotional look. “Seriously, I’m so happy for you.”

“Thanks, man,” said Clint, clearing his throat.

“But there’s no way in hell you’re going to have dinner without a shirt on,” added Steve. “Go put some real clothes on.”

Clint sighed and glanced at Bucky, who just shrugged at him again. “The man has a point,” he said, like his t-shirt and sweatpants were any better. “You should make some kind of effort for a team meal.”

“So much for soulmate solidarity,” muttered Clint, and went to go find a shirt.

Behind him he heard Tony drop something. “What? _Soulmate_ what?” 

Clint just grinned to himself.

****

“You know,” said Bucky, as Clint curled closer into his arms and wondered if he’d ever get to be the cuddler instead of the cuddlee, “Steve found a much easier way to do this when he was in basic.”

Clint watched Mulan determinedly climbing to the top of a pole to get an arrow. “Steve’s just gotta outclass everyone. Overachiever.”

They’d both still been tired after dinner, but not yet ready to sleep again. It hadn’t taken much persuasion from Clint to convince Bucky that what they really should do was watch Mulan while snuggling in bed.

“Also, he should do more Avengers training sessions shirtless,” he added as Bucky slid a hand down his back to curl around his waist. “It’s working for Shang.”

Bucky snorted. “Yeah, Steve’s not the team member I want to see training shirtless.”

“Natasha?” asked Clint innocently, and got a gentle pinch that he probably deserved.

They watched for another few minutes in silence, then Bucky said, “And Steve’s not always the best at everything. Feels like he made a lot of mistakes with me joining the team.”

Clint shrugged. “He was excited to have his bestie back.”

“Not the point,” said Bucky. “I just want you to know, I never woulda taken your place. Even when you hated me. I could see how important you were on the team, I wasn’t going to fuck with that.”

Clint lifted his head off his shoulder to look at him. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “You don’t need to reassure me, not now. Not when there’s no way in hell they’re going to have either of us on the team without the other.”

A smile glimmered on Bucky’s face. “We succeed or fail together,” he said.

“We’re gonna succeed,” Clint told him. “Are you kidding? Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier? No fuckers are going to be able to stop us.”

Bucky’s smile broadened into a grin, and Clint couldn’t help adding, “After all, we’re as mysterious as the dark side of the moon.”

Buckley groaned out loud, but he was still smiling as he leaned in to kiss Clint, cupping his hand around the back of his head to hold him close. Clint just clung on to him and kissed back, letting the warm glow of having this guy as his soulmate settle through him. Yeah, that shitty mission had been more than worth it.


End file.
